Talking to Tyler

Okay, so the other day I noticed on Facebook that Tyler had finally gotten internet over in Afghanistan and that he had used Skype to call mom and dad. Well, that clued me in that maybe I should finally get around to downloading the software and getting in touch with my soldier brother. I was in the middle of trying to figure out how to use the thing and setting up my headphones and mics when Tyler popped up on my screen and was ready to chat. Now, in my job I'm really used to video conferencing (I design systems for that after all) but I had not really ever used it for a purpose outside of testing and training. It was a pretty cool deal to be talking to my brother, who is half way across the world....for FREE.

So, last night I was telling my kids that I spoke with their uncle on the computer and that I'd try and set up a time for them to do it too. I told them that we'd half to get up a little early one morning and catch him before he went to bed. The kids were pretty excited about that idea but I didn't realize how excited until this morning. I rolled out of bed and took my shower and when I got out I noticed Jon was already up. It was a little early for him ~6 am and he came walking down the hallway rubbing his eyes and he said, "dad...can we call uncle Tyler now? I got up early." I chuckled and paniced, i didn't know if Ty would be available and if I had time (I was running a little late). But I couldn't help but try, so we went downstairs and turned on Skype and found out that he wasn't available to chat. I know...a little anti-climatic...but I thought it was a good story.

Mini-Vacation

Well, Jenni and the kids got out of school and we had a week to kill before Jon went to summer school, as a kindergartner, so Jenni and I decided to take a short vacation back to Mahoney State Park. This time we drug Jenni's parents with us for our four day trip. We had a good time, for the most part, the only exception would be that Lily was a complete pain in the rear. She didn't want to eat, sleep, or be happy. That was completely weird because usually she's a good traveler.

We spent a rainy day at the Omaha zoo. the rain really didn't kill any of the fun because most of the stuff at Omaha is indoors. We really only got wet when we decided to ride the chair lift over the Africa section of the zoo, it was drizzling when we boarded and almost immediately after leaving the platform it really started raining.

One of the funniest moments came at the ape house. Jon was standing in the window looking at this gorilla face to face when all of a sudden the animal leaped straight at the window and pounded on the glass. It scared the living crap out of Jon. It turns out this particular gorilla is a performer and one of the trainers was sitting in the window next to Jon and gave the sign for the gorilla to hit the window. She thought is was funny and...you know...it was.

We also spent a rainy morning at the Strategic Air Command Museum, I really enjoyed it but that's probably because it was a bunch of war airplanes and I'm a boy so the two kind of fit.

The rest of the time we just spent playing in the park, some of Jenni's family came down from Schuyler to visit, and trying to keep Lily happy.