South Dakota Part 1

The first stop of our summer trip to South Dakota was The Corn Palace. It really was a very neat thing to see! We were caught acting corny!

From there we went to the Badlands National Park. I have been there before, but the beauty of it still amazes me. The kids loved it and were off running and trying to climb huge hills, it was scary! They also collected some very nice rocks from here!

And then, no trip to South Dakota is complete without a stop at Wall Drug! I just love this tourist trap. They have a great place for the kids to play in the back and they loved it!

From there we went on to Custer, more on that in another post!

Air Show 2010

I have been going to the air show or watching the air show for longer than I remember. I have always enjoyed it, but this year, I was not too excited to go to it. But, we did. Luckily, we met up with some friends and hung out with them all day! It so helped pass the time. The kids and the guys wandered around and checked out some aircraft while we stayed with the chairs and enjoyed the scenery :)

It was hot, but there was a nice breeze and we were in shade most of the time. The kids had a blast, so in that case it was so worth it. We got caught in some nasty traffic and lines last year, so we left a little bit before the show was over, got right on a shuttle and there was no traffic, so we were back at the school in no time. Perfect!! We have already decided that next year, we will watch it from the comfort of our house!

Lily's Preschool Open House

On Sunday we all got to go to Lily's preschool open house. She is going to a different preschool this year and she is just sooo excited about it. She loved everything about the open house and was so sad when it was time to leave. She was even sadder when she found out she had to wait another whole week (how long is a week mom? 7 days Lily. Oh man, that's like waiting forever!) She asks every day if she gets to go to preschool and I tell her, nope, you have to wait ___ more days. By Sunday, she is going to be a basket case!

I am pretty excited about this new school too. They come to get her out of the car and bring her to the car at the end of the day, can I just say sweet! They also go on a field trip every month and do so many other

cool things. On top of all of that, it is so much cheaper than the preschool she went to last year! Score!

The fun thing is that this is the preschool that I went to when I was 3 and 4, and the building is still standing after all of these years! Man, that is a miracle!

Here's looking forward to a wonder year of learning for Lily!

Skyler's first day of school

Skyler was so looking forward to a new school year. I was surprised that he was still excited after he found out that he did not get the teacher he was really hoping for, that his best friends were not in his class, and that he would not get to ride the bus to school; but alas, he was still excited to go on this first day, and everyday since!

Here is is right before school with his sister and then right after school, see he still looked happy at the end of the day! I am happy we are off to a great start for the new school year and I hope he enjoys second grade this year!

Summer 2010

Well, again I have been lax on blogging. It isn't that I don't think about it. I really do. I have lots of blogs written in my head, but they just don't seem to make it out of my head and into my blog. So, here I go again, trying to get going at it again.

We all had a very busy summer, starting the very day that school got out. Skyler was whisked away on a train in the middle of the night to go to Colorado with his grandparents. He was there for about 5 days and he had a ball. I write about all of his adventures there in a separate post.

When he came back from that we all left for a family vacation in South Dakota. We had a lot of fun, but we did way too much stuff and were exhausted when we came back. Again, this will be a separate post.

After that, we were home for a bit and then Skyler was off to Wichita to spend the week with his aunt. Actually I think he was really just done there to hang with his friend all week, but you never know.

The next week my sister came up here to hang out. She kept us busy!

So, in between all of that crazy stuff, we tried to pack in some fun summer stuff!

• Skyler played coached pitched baseball for the first time and he loved it! He really made progress in his basic baseball skills and is very excited to continue with baseball next summer.

• We went to Railroad Days and instead of going to the Lauritzen Gardens, we went to the Durham Western Heritage Museum. They had the Boyscouts of America commemorative locomotive there, but also all kinds of other fun stuff! I love the old "Omaha" display, which is where Chuck, Lily, and I are posing in this picture. Wish I could have that house! Skyler and Lily got to pose as old time peeps here too, aren't they handsome!

• We also went to the cheap $2 kid movies at Twin Creek almost every week. We all love this. The ticket prices are great, the movies are just for kiddos, and they get popcorn and water included in the price of the ticket!
• We went skating every week and Skyler made huge progress in the area of skating. He advanced from regular skates to inlines and is ready for inline hockey this fall. He is sooooo excited about that.
• We went bowling once a week too. Kidsbowlfree is a great program that allowed the kids to bowl 2 free games daily. We only went once a week because the bowling alley was not really that close, but they loved it and had fun.
• We got this great Go Play! Adventure book. It 25 locations in it where you can go and investigate and each place has a specific symbol that you can make a rubbing of in your book. There are also a few extra pages where you can create your own adventure and we did one at Boystown. We visited the Hall of fame musuem, the chapel, and Father Flanagan's house, which is where the picture of the kids sitting at school desk was taken. We made a rubbing of one the Boystown bricks in our book.
• We visited the splash park, Papio Bay, and Mahoney State Park's water park.
• We also went to the final Friday night Blast at the Blatt for the Omaha Royals. We had so much fun, it was Star Wars night and we got to see Darth Vader and all of his friends! The fireworks were awesome, set to Star Wars music. The picture of Skyler and I was taken at the game.

Well, that is about it for now. Some future posts will include more pictures from our summer fun, posts about our vacation to South Dakota, and first day of school pictures1

15 Years of Wedded Bliss

This past week Chuck and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary. I cannot wrap my mind around the fact that it has been 15 years! It seems like yesterday that I was getting up at 5 in the morning to go get my hair done, in order to be at the church by 7:30 to get pictures taken before our 10:00 service. Our reception was great, but it sure started off hot, July 29, 1995 , it was 97 degrees when our outdoor reception started at 5:00! I thought I was going to melt! But, we survived. Here is a little review of the past 15 years.

A QUICK LOOK BACK AT THE LAST 15 YEARS

Year	Events
1	Woohoo! We are finally together! No separation! Working, learning, loving. My first airplane ride and first visit to Florida and Disney World. We both started new jobs and you were going to school. Chuck was studying to be a pilot and got his private pilot’s license. We bought our first and last pet, that crazy Mary, who was our baby/freak show car for 7 years.
2	We had some creep try to break in to our house and it made us feel very uncomfortable! We spent a lot of time traveling to snowboard competitions, which led to us California, my first time there, for nationals. We had a great time and decided to move to Utah since Chuck was doing so well snowboarding and the Olympics would be there. We packed up our new furniture and hit the road to Utah.
3	We were finally somewhere alone! Spent the night at the Anniversary Inn for our 2nd anniversary and thought it was such a cool place. We went on a few hikes, hiked to Timpanogos Cave. Chuck snowboarded, sold cars, worked at UPS, and Performance Sound. I taught. We went to Telluride for nationals. Our first trip to Montana for a workshop that I did not even go to!!!! I tried to learn how to snowboard, but busted my ankle up so bad, that I decided it was not to be. We had a couple of visits from Wade & co and I cooked my first real Thanksgiving dinner.
4	We moved from the slums to a nice place in a nice location, with a crappy roommate. Luckily, he didn’t stay around too long! I started school for IT. New car - Chuck got the Rodeo. Our first trip to Bryce, Zion, and the Grand Canyon. We so enjoyed sitting on our balcony, eating dinner and listening to smooth jazz on KBZY, the Breeze.
5	We went to Snowbird for our anniversary dinner, so special! I started a new job in a new career which involved me traveling! Came to Omaha for New Years. We loved to eat at Market Street Broiler and Bangkok Thai. Chuck started having colitis episodes, but we were unable to get a clear or unabsurd diagnosis.
6	Moved back to Nebraska. New apartment, new jobs - Chuck had so many choices he couldn’t decide where to work at first. Custom Electronics and then TSI. I worked at Qwest. I got Betty, and Chuck went back to school. We went to Kansas City to see Sting perform, best seats ever!
7	We started building a house!!! It was so exciting! Chuck got a new car. We took a trip to Keystone that Chuck won at Mr. Crescent and started to get ready for a baby.
8	Skyler!! We had a beautiful baby! Chuck hurt his shoulder snowboarding. We were excited about a new baby, but it was not to be and we were sad, but we pulled through :) Chuck had much needed shoulder surgery.
9	We enjoyed our Skyler he just grew up too fast. We had to put Mary the cat to sleep because she was not nice to our Skyler!
10	I was laid off from Qwest. We took a much needed trip to Key West - viva the key lime pie! I swam in the ocean for the first time. I went back to teaching.
11	We worked on finishing the basement. I took a different teaching job. We took a trip to Texas so Chuck could race his VW and that was when we found out - we were going to have another baby! Chuck started a new job at Cox and went back to school. We drove to Denver for a Dave Matthew’s concert, that we didn’t enjoy very much.
12	Lily joined our family! I no longer worked outside the home. Chuck started a new job at Paragon. Skyler played soccer and started preschool. We went to Kansas City to see Tool, ate at the Cheesecake Factory for the first time. My car died and we had to get it towed twice, get a new battery and we got home much later than we were supposed to!
13	We took family trips to Hawaii, got to see volcano national park, and Kansas for weddings. Chuck started a new job at Physician’s Mutual. We took a trip to Montana by way of Jackson Hole and Yellowstone and LOVED IT! Had the best ever breakfast burritos at DOG and escaped what could have been a gnarly collision with a deer. Did some great hiking up to the glaciers and took a pseudo white water rafting trip. Chuck accepted Jesus!!!!! We took a family vacation to Niobrara State Park. We bought bikes and Chuck biked to work through the summer.
14	We took a trip to Utah to see if we could ever live there again. The answer was NO! Got to watch Kyle Korver play in a Jazz game. We took our first camping trip as a family. Learned how to tag monarch butterflies.
15	I started school. We took a trip to Bozeman, AWESOME! We took a family trip South Dakota.