Memphis Family Vacation part 1

We no sooner said good bye to our friends Doug and Laura and we were packing our car for our next big excursion...Memphis. My aunt threw herself a college graduation party and we decided to make the trip to the land of Elvis and Southern BBQ for our summer vacation. Knowing Lilly was probably not going to be found of an eight hour car ride we decided to split our trip into two days and stop in St Louis on the way down.

We spent the morning driving across the state and went directly to the St. Louis Science Museum. I'd been there before and I thought that the hands on activities and the Omnimax movie would be a good activity for the afternoon. We had a good time, the bonus is that the museum is free (kind of...parking is ten bucks). When we walked into the museum the first thing that greeted us was a full size Tyrannosaurus Rex. Which tied in nicely to the movie on dinosaurs we saw at the omnimax. And the big ones out in this little learning playground.

They have a walking bridge over the highway and you can point radar guns at the passing cars and clock there speed and a wing dedicated to space exploration. That's where we learned how much money it would cost us to blast one of the kids into outer space. We let Lily demonstrate that for you.


Anyone want to donate, we need about $164,898 more dollars to get her there before she gets any bigger.

And finally, what would a trip to St. Louis be without a stop by the arch. We had a picnic lunch there before we headed south to the land of the southern drawl and sweet tea.

Tractor Show 2008

Jenni and I got back from Vegas only hours before we had some of our friends from Des Moines come and visit us. Doug and Laura had made arrangements to come see us and since visits with them are few and far between, we couldn't cancel just because we were tired from our trip. So, while they were here we ventured over to the Lathrop Tractor Show. It is one of our favorite yearly activities, people from all over bring thier antique tractors and steam engines and we walk around and enjoy the way farming used to be...and it looks like it used to be hard. The show usually also has some period activities like corn husking and rope making and the kids usually get plenty of opportunities to participate.




Here's our friend Laura, her daughter Hanna, and the yet to be determined tyke in her belly.

Later that day us boys: Doug, Jon, my little brother Andres, and myself all went to the baseball game. We had a lot of fun there as well, it was bobblehead doll night and the two boys were excited just to go, then as they walk through the gates someone hands them a present. They thought that was pretty cool and the Royals actually won a game, so that made it better.

The girls all went to a local park where they have a fountain system that the kids can wade through and play in the water. I guess Kayla really didn't like the shooting streams and stayed a little off to the side. And Hanna really got up close and personal with one water spray and it upset her a little.



I think everyone had a good day and a great weekend with friends.

Viva Las Vegas

Towards the beginning of June I go to a massive audio video geek conference for work and this year it was in Vegas. Jenni and I had talked about her trying to go with me a long time ago, because neither one of us had ever visited Sin City, but that looked like it was going to fall through. But just a few days before I was suppose to leave our plans changed massively and Jenni was able to go out to stay with me. I flew out pretty uneventfully on a Monday morning, Jenni was on a different flight later that day. Only it turned out to be really late on Monday, she was slated for a 2pm flight out of KC, but instead it was canceled and she didn't get out of the airport until 10pm. Luckily with the time change she landed in Vegas at 11pm. Still, I had to go pick her up at an unfamiliar airport in the dark, and it did a good job of raising my blood pressure.


We had a good time, I went to my classes and the conference show floor and Jenni spent her day reading by the pool. Then in the evenings we walked the strip and looked at all the bizarre people. And then one night we took in the Medieval knights show at Excalibur. It was fun, just look at the meal.

The bad news was that we were big losers at the slots, we lost a total of five whole dollars. It was a fun "adult only" trip, the kids split time with thier grandparents.

Mother's Day / Jenni's birthday

Jenni's birthday and Mother's Day are one week apart, which makes my life a little more difficult. I have to try and come up with two very special days in such a short amount of time and it is a challenge to plan just one. So, this year I decided to give my wife a new digital camera...a digital SLR. Since I dropped the big bucks on that we decided to keep the rest of our celebrations simple. So I asked Jenni on a Wednesday night what she wanted to do for a special day over the weekend and her answer was, "go to the zoo." I was in the middle of thinking that was a fun idea when she continued her sentence, "....in Omaha." I thought that sounded like a good idea and we made reservations in a hotel for Friday night in Omaha and planned to go the zoo on Saturday morning. We had an absolute blast! We got a hotel in downtown Omaha and even though we didn't get there until 9'ish Friday night, we took the kids down to the pool and swam for a little while. Then after a long night of the two older ones not sleeping, we piled in the car and headed to the zoo. And of course we tried out that brand new camera and thought we'd share some photos.


Funny story with this one, we were walking to get lunch and we came across this guy wearing butterfly wings and carrying a tiger skin. So naturally we had to ask what he was doing. Apparently the tiger used to be a resident of the zoo and died of old age, so they now carry around the pelt to let kids touch and feel a tiger...as for the wings, I don't know.

And here are just some pretty pictures.


Lily continues to surprise us at how good she is, she slept the entire night at the hotel and didn't punish us too much for strapping her into a car seat all the way through the zoo and the ride home Saturday afternoon. She really is the easiest baby we've had...so far (I'm terrified she'll make up for this good behavior when she is a teen).

We've been busy

Okay, please forgive us on our lack of updates over the last TWO months. We've been pretty busy since May and I'll be throwing up a lot of posts to get you all caught up on our summer adventures. It all starts with a last minute Mother's Day surprise and we'll take you right up to the Fourth of July. Stay tuned, the second half of the summer is just as busy as the first half.