11 years as a family

After picking Corrine up from camp we headed to Omaha Nebraska for the weekend. Sat marked 11 years since our famiy began.
When you cross over into Omaha on the 80, you see 2 huge train engines up on a hill. We stopped and ate our lunch while exploring the area. The trains are part of a monument about the Transcontinental Railway that connects the east to the west.


We then headed for the Omaha Children's Museum. The kids absolutely LOVED the ball room. We spent at least an hour and a half playing in there.

The room centers around a bucket that fills with balls and they get dumped out of it every few minutes. To get the balls into the bucket, you have to put them into different tubes which send them to different places. Some go straight to the bucket, others to another opening. The kids had alot of fun laying under the bucket and having the balls drop onto them.
One area the kids really liked involved a crane, a conveyor belt and a track. To start this one, you 1st raised the balls in a cage onto a platform. Then you brought the crane over and raised the platform to dump them into the cranes bucket. You then had to turn the crane 180 degrees and dump them into a tube which dropped them into the bottom of another cage. There was a crank you turned which ran the conveyor belt that brought then to the top of the cage where they went into a metal track which brought them back into the original cage. If the crane was dumped early, the balls would spill on the ground.

Ammon especially had a great time playing in the real firetruck and wearing the boots and hat. The boots weighed about 5 lbs each, but he was determined to keep them on!



We got a room at an Embassy suites in a nearby city. I have come to LOVE Embassy Suites for many reasons. The rooms are so nice. You walk into a living area with couches and a table. In the hallway there is a small kitchen area with a fridge, microwave and sink, then there is a door into the bedroom. You have so much more room and have 3 beds when you use the bed in the pull-out couch. In the evening they have a welcome reception with snacks and in the morning they have a full breakfast with made to order pancakes and omelets.
We went swimming in the evening after dinner at Texas Roadhouse. Simeon has been learning how to swim this summer, and was getting lots of good practice in the pool. We didn't bring Ammon's life vest, so he went under and swallowed more pool water then one kids should, so I took him back for pj's early. Rebecca went into the water up to her belly button, but it was too cold for her.
Saturday we went to the Henry Doorly Zoo. This is such a fun zoo. There are exhibits outside, then they have a desert dome, an indoor jungle, a gorilla building and a big cats building.

Last time we came they were building the butterfly exhibit, and this time we were able to go through it. Johann had a butterfly land on his back pocket. We were able to get a very close look at a grasshopper molting.
We watched the bears get fed which wasn't worth the time we waited.
The desert dome and jungle always take us so long to go through since we stop and look at so many different things. In the jungle some of the animals are more free to roam. There were these 2 little monkeys that were within feet of us hanging on a vine. Then our kids became the monkeys (or sloths) and hung from the vines.

We had such a nice time this weekend celebrating the 11 years since our family began.