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.

Grandma's Helper

Alex had a weekend of helping Grandpa install an irrigation system for their new lilacs and helping Grandma water by hand.

He also decided that he likes to climb. Here's a picture of one of his first attempts to climb a "tree". He wasn't very successful, but was very cute to watch attempting to scale the nice smooth pole holding the live trees up. Perhaps he'll try to find a tree with branches next time.

Julie's Big Day

Alex and I are back in Bozeman, and enjoying looking back over the pictures from a wonderful weekend in Portland. After a few days in transit, Julie and Ryan are finally off on their honeymoon to Mexico. These pictures highlight some of the many special moments of the wedding weekend, from Julie and I getting our nails done for the first time to Jeremy escorting Mom down the aisle at the start of Julie's ceremony. And of course two of my favorite moments: Eric catching the bouquet and Julie sweeping up after the reception.

Julie is Gartered.

Jeremy coaches Alex before his walk down the aisle.

Eric catches the bouquet.

Julie cleans up after the reception.

Stuffing Julie in the car.

Off to Mexico!

Weekend Festivities

We've just concluded one of my favorite time in the year - two days that are Father's Day, my birthday, and Jeremy and my anniversary. Cathy came for the weekend, which made it even more festive. Strange spending Father's day and my anniversary away from Jeremy. I'm sorry he had to spend them alone this year. At least we'll finally be together again on Thursday.

Summer is really here and we were able to picnic on the beach, complete with sunburns and seagull feedings.

Dad celebrated father's day by making himself a feast. He's certainly the King Crab!

Yesterday we celebrated my birthday by heading for Spokane for a girl's day at the mall.

Julie had a glamorous makeover, and we were given instructions on applying her wedding makeup.

After two hours of cosmetic fun, we headed to a cute little neighborhood straight out of the 50's to visit The Ruby Slipper - a little tiny upscale shoe boutique, a little artsy shop, and a used clothing store, all right in a row. We were too late in the day for milkshakes, but the cute little restaurant was fun just to visit the outside of.

The Milk Bottle

We headed home, leaving Cathy in Spokane, and came home for another feast by dad, presents and a tiny little chocolate brownie cake (perfect!!). Cathy gave me an art set that included items of interest for both Alex and I (toddler safe scissors, water colors, crayons, and oil pastels, to name a few). Mom and dad gave me a wonderful knitting bag filled with supplies to make a couple of really cute little baby hats. I've been wanting something I can accomplish in a room with Alex, and he seems to be letting me knit in peace, so maybe I'll actually be able to finish them!

Alex has decided that he's a puppy dog since Jeremy's uncle Fred put a leash on him a few weeks ago, and now we have to feed him dog food, give him bowls of water, and take him on walks. Here he is with him mommy puppy dog.

Alex feeds his new friend, Mr. Squirrel.

Wedding Preparation Extravaganza

Alex and I are officially on vacation. We're spending a couple of weeks in Sandpoint, Idaho with my parents and Julie preparing for her wedding on the 21st.

From pouring little lavender candles for favors to creating head covering for the bridesmaids, this has been a really crafty week. It's been so fun to have this time to work on all the little details for Julie's wedding that I felt like I ran out of time for with mine.

Julie is the exact opposite of Bridezilla - letting us do whatever we want for decorations etc. We keep coming up with more and more to do, as I'm sure we will until she's off on her honeymoon.

Here's a photo of what we've done to mom and dad's house, showing how my parenting has degenerated. This is Julie feeding Alex a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the living room at 9:00 last night:

Alex has been perfecting his photography skills, and created

this lovely modern art piece titled Garbage on White.