Settling In

After much anticipation, Alex and I have arrived in Omaha, and are settling in. We've already had quite an adventure. Alex has joined the Polar Bear Club at the Omaha Zoo, and has weekly meetings to learn all about different creatures, last week was bats. He was excited to learn that bats sleep while hanging from their toes. His favorite part of the zoo, however, may be the metal sculptures of animals that he's able to touch and sit on.

We have an arboretum a few blocks away from our apartment, which Alex often insists on visiting. He likes to hear me read all the names of the different trees. We're getting more exercise here that we have since living on the beach last fall.

Today we all visited the waterfront downtown, and had a nice walk next to fountains and swans.

So far, Omaha seems like a great place to live, except for the wind, humidity, and car accidents. Yes, I had my first accident the first time driving here myself. Ugh. I basically drove off the road at 50 mph, and did a 180, stopping inches from a concrete wall (we're all fine except for the car). Alex thought the whole thing was great fun, and enjoyed the police cars and riding in a tow truck. I'm getting to relive it over and over as he reenacts it with his toy trucks and asks me every time we get in the car if we are going to have an accident this time. This will probably turn out to be his first memory, and I'll never live it down.

I'm at the library and time is short, but hopefully I'll be able to update this again soon.

Hugs from Nebraska!

Alex Imagines Omaha

In a great fit of artistic energy, Alex created the following drawings of what he imagines Omaha to be like. The swirly blue line going up the left side of the page is an escalator "going up to all the toys". The light pink swirl at the top is one of the toys, a choo-choo-train. In the middle of the blue page is the swimming pool, with Alex wrapped in a towel, and his blue rubber ducky, complete with a head, eyes, a tail, and feet. I'm sure this is quite visible to you.
The yellow and green drawing features another escalator also "going up to all the toys". Omaha also has green trees and bushes. As you can see, he has a very detailed idea of what Nebraska will be like. Just a few more days, and we'll see it for ourselves. Note:inspiration for this art came from "The Third Anti-Coloring Book" by Susan Striker, provided by my personal librarian, Mom. Thanks Mom! This is a really neat book!

Golf - a Contact Sport?

Alex and I had the good fortune of a visit from dad yesterday as he passed through town on his way to Colorado. With the crazy hours dad keeps, he arrived here with plenty of time to go to the Museum of the Rockies in the afternoon. Alex kept him safe through the dinosaur exhibit, and dad kept Alex safe through the costume exhibit, featuring original costumes from Star Trek and Star Wars. Then they battled against each other through the Lewis and Clark Challenge outside. I've never seen mini golf played quite like this before.

After an unusual treat of pizza hut delivery for dinner, we headed to our backyard for dad's fireworks show. He brought hand selected fireworks for Alex , including snakes and the little pops that you through at the ground or step on to make them go bang. Alex even stayed up until dark for a show of fountains and assorted other ground blasters. Dani was home and did us the favor of lighting the scarier ones. Alex has been begging for more snakes all day today. Luckily dad left a box for him to set off on the 4th when Jeremy is home.

Thanks Dad for such a fun visit! It was a perfect summer afternoon.