My Birthday Trip!

For my birthday last month I got the best present ever! A trip to Connecticut to visit with my best friend Jeannie and her family. This is a picture of me and two of her little boys, Jacob and Peter.

Jeannie knows how well I deal with cake (see it, gorge on it!) so we had strawberry shortcake for my birthday instead. She knows I've been trying to lose weight and that I attend Weight Watchers and she was so helpful and supportive of my efforts to eat well and stay active on the trip. Who could ask for a better friend?

I had such a great time on the trip... my birthday was a Sunday and I had a two hour nap that afternoon! It was so relaxing and restful not to have to worry about the kids (I don't think I helped Jeannie at all! We have agreed that for the next trip we need to meet each other somewhere so neither one of us has to worry about kids!)

On Wednesday, Jeannie's husband Matt took the day off to stay home with the boys and we enjoyed a day in New York together. It was so much fun and a day I'll never forget! I haven't laughed that hard in a long time! This picture is of me waiting in the New Haven train station to catch the train to New York.

Jeannie and I on the ferry headed to the Statue of Liberty. It was VERY cold! I felt like we were in Europe, there were so many different languages being spoken around us. It was a really cool experience!

After we got off the ferry from the Statue of Liberty this guy conned us out of five bucks. I stood up next to him to have Jeannie take a picture and he grabbed me and put the scarf on my head and the sunglasses on me and started putting my arms in all these positions. Then after Jeannie was done taking the pictures, he turned over the torch prop he had and it said, "Five dollars, please." What?!?!? I couldn't really refuse without making a scene. Geez, the guy is probably getting rich off of this scam!

Here's me still getting fleeced by "Mr. Statue of Trickery Man." (Course, I should say Jeannie was fleeced, cause she's the one who handed over the five dollars!)

The Statue of Liberty was beautiful. I can imagine it must have been a welcome sight to all those immigrants who finally arrived at Ellis Island after such a long and arduous trip across the Atlantic.

She was definitely smaller than I imagined though. On TV somehow she seems twice as big as she really is. If she wasn't up on a pedestal, she wouldn't really be that big at all.

Me on the ferry, New York in the background.

Jeannie on the ferry.

Times Square was really cool! I felt like I was on TV or something. It was fun to visit, but I don't know how people actually live there--so much noise and traffic and people everywhere!

Ground Zero. This was really cool to see. Jeannie and I reminisced about what we were doing on 9/11. I remember my parents talking about big events and saying, "I'll never forget what I was doing that day." But I never thought I'd have one of those memories. I was actually just finishing a TaeBo DVD and turned on the Today Show to stretch out and there it was, the Twin Towers on fire and as I watched, the second plane hit the other tower. It was kind of surreal to stand there and imagine all the people and all the smoke and how terrifying it must have been. I also remember that Ben was at the Provo Airport. He was training for his Private Pilot's License. That day changed everything for us, because the airline industry basically tanked, leaving Ben's chosen career field a bust. He started looking at other options, and that led us eventually to the Air Force. So, 9/11 definitely affected our lives to a huge extent.

Jeannie and I headed home on the evening train. We were so exhausted by that time, just trying to take a picture was totally hilarious! Our makeup was gone, our hair was flat, and we couldn't stop laughing!

We finally managed to take an okay picture. That day in New York was amazing! We saw the Statue of Liberty, we went to Wall Street, Ground Zero, Times Square, we saw "The Phantom of the Opera" (that's a whole other story in itself! We went to several different box offices trying to get last minute seats, but they were all either sold out or too expensive or we just plain couldn't decide! We finally made one last trip back to Phantom and the only seats left were "standing room only" but they were only $26.50! So, we snatched them up and stood in the row behind the seats to watch the musical. I joked during the show that we were like the peasants, standing in the back while the aristocrats enjoyed their luxurious seats. It was hilarious! I remember wanting to sit down, but thinking about the $130 that each person had paid and being happy to stand in the back!)

We also saw Radio City Music Hall, Rockefeller Center, and Grand Central Station. We wanted to see the Empire State Building, but it was kind of rainy and the top was in the clouds. That's fine though, we saved something for next time! It was a fabulous trip! I loved seeing Jeannie's beautiful house and getting to experience New England. Next time I just have to go in the fall so I can see the trees change color. Thanks, Jeannie, for an awesome trip! I love you!

Coco Key

For Carli's birthday this year she decided to forgo a party with friends and opted for a day at Coco Key with the family. Coco Key is an indoor water park here in Omaha.

We arranged a babysitter for Sammy (thanks Jamie!) and picked Eli up early from school. Of course, when we got there, we saw that it didn't actually open that day until 3 pm, so picking Eli up early was kind of stupid. In fact, the stupid part was that we didn't call to find out the hours in the first place... duh!

We ended up picking Sammy back up, going home for an hour and then dropping Sammy off again (thanks again to Jamie!) and heading out to Coco Key.

We got there just as they opened the doors, so for about the first hour it was pretty open. We had the run of the place and could walk right on to any of the slides. It was really really fun! (The best part is that normal tickets are $25, but we got the military discount tickets for $12! For any of you who read this who live here but aren't military, we can get you the discount tickets any time!)

The waterpark consisted of several pools, two dedicated completely to small children. One had a zero point entry and two small slides specifically for kids under 42" tall. Eli and Carli had a blast there and went down those blue slides about a hundred times! The pool was chock full of parents watching their kids. There were also four medium sized waterslides (Carli was just tall enough, so we all got to go down them), and three very tall waterslides. Carli took one look at the stairs going up that high and decided against it. There is a huge jacuzzi with a little tunnel leading outside. It was fun to go outside and see the steam rising from the water. I think the jacuzzi was definitely one of our favorite spots.

There were so many things to do I don't have room to list them. It was super fun and we will definitely go back!

I have to mention the big bucket though. In the center of the park up on top there is a huge bucket that slowly fills with water and then turns over and dumps it all out. As it starts to dump, a bell rings to warn the people down below that the deluge is coming. We made sure to be standing there a couple of times when the water came pouring down--all 200 gallons of it! It was crazy to feel that amount of water come down on your head. Whenever the bell started ringing just about everyone in the park would stop to look at the idiots standing under the water (we did it several times! =) ).


Once the park started filling up, the noise got to be kind of crazy. With hundreds of gallons of water pouring all over the place, hundreds of kids screaming and laughing, music over the loudspeaker (although it was impossible to hear any of it), people talking and laughing at the restaurant off to the side and just all the noise in general, it got really loud in there!

I was glad we got there right as it opened so we could enjoy the park without so many people. It's much nicer to sit in the jacuzzi without having people packed in there like sardines.

All in all, it was a great time! Carli and Eli loved every minute of it and Ben and I loved watching them play. It was worth every penny of the money. I can't wait until Sammy is old enough to go with us!

Finally!

Okay, so I thought I had this blog figured out weeks ago, but it still wasn't showing up right in Firefox. I got so frustrated with it I just had to stay away until I had enough time to get it fixed. It ended up being a problem with one single post... I'm not sure what it was or why it was that way, but once I deleted that post, it was fixed and now I'm pretty sure it's showing up right no matter what browser you're using.

Whew! I'm so glad it's fixed! Now I can get caught up on the last several months of happenings! I know you're all breathless with anticipation!

A Great Story

FIXED!

I finally fixed it... as you can see! Yay me!

AHHHHH!!!

This stupid blog will not show up right! When I look at the blog, the sidebar (profile, link list, family pictures and bios) are pushed to the bottom of the posts. Are you (the readers) seeing that the same way? I have heard that sometimes the view depends on the explorer you're using (Internet Explorer has problems more often than Mozilla Firefox). I have changed the template several different times, tried to edit the HTML codes, change the width of the columns, etc. I have searched google for help with the problem, but no matter what I do, I cannot get the stupid sidebar to come back up to the side!

It was working fine the other day, so I know it's not because I added a gadget that doesn't fit the width. Does anyone else have any bright ideas for me?? Help!

New Basement = Room to Camp!

Carli and Eli are loving the new basement . . . and all the new room to play that it provides. The past two weekends they've loved "camping" in the basement. They were able to watch a movie from the door of the tent and then lay down and go to sleep when they got tired. What could be better than that?

Once again, WAY TO GO on the new basement, DAD!