The big boys headed to Texas for the BYU/Oklahoma game. Reggie flew in from California to go with them. It was great to see him and they had a GREAT TIME! They had to drive through the night to make Reggie’s flight back home. Nate called me when they were leaving the game and he could hardly talk he had been yelling so much! He bleeds blue, I am convinced of it!
Downtown Dallas.
Dealy Plaza where JFK was assassinated.
They also went to an aquarium that had several levels starting in the trees, and ending down in the ocean. Lots of neat animals, birds and fish. And a Mayan fire show!
Dallas LDS temple.
Before the game.
The biggest MOST ridiculously HUGE television screen you have ever seen!!!
Rylan and Ethan earned their Bobcat badges this week. They’ve been working hard! Our little branch doesn’t have a cubscout program so we joined other members in our branch and meet with the Methodist group. The scoutmaster, whose name is ‘Doc’ is a huge kid! He is great! He’s eating a worm after the kids met their fundraiser goal. Slimy and sick!
This summer was a busy one for us. It went by so quick! The kids are back in school already!!! Sheesh! This summer we went to visit family, put in our yard and Nate and I got to go to New York. I have never been. New York is a pretty cool place. I can see why people want to live there.
Nate served his LDS mission there. Harlem is a different place than it was 15 years ago! We saw a white couple walking down the street with a baby stroller and Nate was speechless! He had the urge to run and stop them and ask them if they were lost because 15 years ago, you would not have seen a white person in Harlem, let alone a whole family! They also happened to be members of our church!
We also had a long stay in Utah. We got to go swimming, visit my grandpa in Idaho, see Martin’s Cove, go through the new temple open house, have BBQ’s and sleepovers. We had a great time and we wish we had more time to do everything and see everyone. It was a great time!
So here are about a bazillion random photos from about May to Sept. Click on the pictures to see them better! Go on… do it now!
BTW, I don’t know what the deal is with that one photo with the ? mark. Whateva… Click on it and you can see it.
Just a quick note, Raevyn has started kindergarten and now it is just Mae and Asher during the day (since in Nebraska, kindergarten goes all day). She loved her first day. In fact she was so annoyed with Ethan trying to get her to leave that she hollered at him and stormed out of the school crying because she had to leave. So I guess it went OK. As a side note, Ethan has accepted into a program at the Middle School called High Ability Learners (HAL) and he will spend a part of every Monday at the middle school during this year (4th grade) and next. Of the 6 or so feeder elementary schools there are just a handful in the program, so we are very pleased with his efforts. Way to go buddy! And check out Rylan’s winning smile, that kid just has a spark.
So it has been a while since we have posted. We have been very busy getting the yard going and dealing with end of school etc. I caught an article on MSN when I opened up the internet browser and it caught my eye and so I read it. I thought it was actually pretty valuable and so I thought I would share it. A very nice, and short, why of expressing some great philosophical insights. http://health.msn.com/weight-loss/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100238861>1=31036
With the kids and myself both being off from school and work we decided to do something rather spontaneous this weekend. We started looking at going to Chicago, Kansas City, or Minneapolis, but decided that we hadn’t really experienced Omaha yet. But rather than “commute” in we decided to put a real “vacation” kind of spin on it and we got a hotel room, put on our loudest tourist outfits, and packed some bags for the road.
The kids were excited to spend the night in the hotel and it helped up the excitement for the next day. We went to the Omaha Children Museum. They had several really fun exhibits, one was a series of integrated devices, pathways, and catching systems that you could put in balls and they would circulate and trigger other chain reactions. It was a blast and we had to drag Asher out of there in order to see different exhibits.
The kids all got to ride a home-made hover craft and seemed to enjoy it. There was a stop-frame-motion animation station, a tandem-bike that measured horsepower and miles per hour, and even pinewood derby-like setup where the kids could make a car from Lego’s and race it.
One of the funner exhibits for the older boys was a “gun” that shot a penny, which you of course provided, and it smashed into a wall and depending on the metals inside it would deform or shatter in some way. It was really cool to watch. Then we went back to the hotel and played for three hours in their inside water park. Complete with a three story, curly Q water slide, and giant bucket that would fill with water and then dump out on you. It was a blast.
We hit the zoo and an 3D IMAX movie on Saturday, but had to cut it short because Rylan’s coughing and fever became too much for him to bear (poor guy, he was so disappointed), but all in all we had a great day made it home safely Saturday night. We will post some pictures and video shortly.
The scoutmaster, whose name is ‘Doc’ is a huge kid! He is great! He’s eating a worm after the kids met their fundraiser goal. Slimy and sick! 
