I forgot to mention, aside from tweets and photos, that Kari's parents were in town last weekend to visit and do some early birthday celebration for Kari.

We started out saturday by brewing our first batch of beer since... last december (wtf). During our 10 month homebrew drought, we made some major plans to upgrade our process and do our first "full boil." So we spent most of the day running around and getting supplies for this fancy brew. We found everything we needed - except for 1 item. We couldn't, for the life of us, find a freakin high output propane regulator. *sigh* So we resorted to our typical partial boil on the stove.

I was a bit sad to revert to the stove, but we made a porter, and we still upgraded our process a bit. I can't wait to be drinking homebrew again in a couple weeks.

After brewing, we ran downtown to the Des Moines Oktoberfest, and... eh. It was ok. I really enjoyed it the past couple years that it's been on 4th st outside of Hessen Haus. But apparently Des Moines had outgrown that area and it got moved to the ballpark parking lot. It needs to go back to 4th st. They need to be more creative with space. ...Put it on that parking garage by the science center or something. The ballpark lot was lit up via spotlights, the food was managed awfully, and the atmosphere just wasn't there. I did however see some friends, enjoyed the music, and drank much oktoberfest.

Sunday, we went to a sushi class for Kari's "birthday meal" from her parents. It was awesome.

We got a tip about this class from a Waterfront chef a few weeks prior, and decided to check it out. La (a sushi chef at Waterfront) hosts this sushi class for $75 a person. It's a 3 hour class with drinks and a meal afterwards. It was fun, we learned a lot, rolled our own maki, and ate great food. Plus, he lets you take home all the rolls you make during the lesson... oh, and he gives you a knife/rolling mat so you can prepare it once you're home. Awesome stuff.

You all should do it.

Here are some pics from the weekend