Henry Doorly

When Taylor was in Kindergarten and 1st grade, we had big birthday parties for him and his school friends, so we had planned to do the same for Landon.  What we didn't plan for was for there to be 13 girls and only 2 boys in Landon's class.  He didn't want to have a party that consisted of mostly girls, so we decided to take him to the Henry Doorly Zoo instead.  And, since Landon and my niece, Natalie, were born 36 hours 13 minutes apart, we decided to celebrate both birthdays! 

The Nebraska Red/White Spring Game was on Saturday, and my dad and older brother met my younger brother there.  Since we were planning the trip to the zoo for Sunday, my little brother stayed with some friends in Lincoln and met us at the zoo on Sunday.  We don't get to see him very often, so it was a wonderful surprise!

I took a million pictures, but I'll leave you with just these few for now.

In the Butterfly Pavillion:

We all took round trips on the new Skyfari - it's AWESOME!  Below is a pic of my lil brother, Kelsey, with Landon and my mom.

See that little pond in the picture above?  As we were going over it, I heard a *clink* *SPLASH*.  My first thought was, "Shoot, now I'm going to have to buy a new lense cap."  Then, it hit me that the splash was a little too big for my little lense cap.  That's when I reached into my pocket and bit my lip to prevent a few choice words from escaping when I realized it was my phone that made that splash!  Kelsey saw exactly where it hit, so once we were off the Skyfari, he ran down to the garden and fished my phone out.  The stupid thing fell over 20 feet, hit the concrete edge of the pond, and sat completely submerged for roughly 30 minutes, so I was pretty sure it was a goner.  Guess what?!  Other than a little fuziness on the right side of the outer screen, the phone works just fine!  A big thumbs up to the EnV3 creators!

And, of course, the birthday kids.  I can't believe they're already 6 years old!

Sale and Grand Opening

I'll be back later on with some pictures from this weekend (I've been moving a little slow this week - sorry!), but I wanted to let you all know about an awesome sale going on here today and tomorrow.  I've already ordered some gorgeous items, and I can't wait to do something with them!


And, if you're in the Hastings area tomorrow, Julie's Expressions is celebrating the grand opening of their Bead department, and there will some Lampwork Bead making demos and a trunk show by Pixybug Designs!

Odds and Ends

Where have I been these last couple of weeks? Didn't mean to disappear on you! We went to the zoo on Sunday, so I'll post about that later on. Right now, I have to make a quick trip to town, but I'll leave you with a post I started a while back. Just a bunch of random things that I jotted down when they crossed my mind!

I recently heard that Tom Selleck was originally supposed to play Indiana Jones. I've been trying to imagine him as Indy. It just doesn't work.

I worked at Subway in high school and a little during college. As I was making myself a baked potato the other day, I realized that I wrap my potatoes in foil the same way I was taught to wrap sandwiches at Subway. In fact, I wrap all things with a cylinder shape the way I wrapped the Subway sandwiches!

While watching "Who Do You Think You Are?", I realized that I'm related to Sarah Jessica Parker. Our common relatives split in the 1600's, but still. Thanks to her, I found out that I am a descendant of the first Elwell in America, and one of my ancestors was one of the very few who actually survived the Salem Witch Trials!

We have a trip planned for August that I'm super excited about. We're going to my favorite place in the whole world, and we get to stay in my mom's old home! It kinda sucks that my grandpa's initials are no longer in the cement on the porch, the cement was replace several years ago. It'll be a bittersweet trip for us. Going there is always and adventure, and we'll get to see my great-aunt Irene, but the farm and Faye are both gone, now. We're also hoping to spend some time here, here, and here.

I should have included this on my list, but I just don't understand the whole Elimination Communication thing. I've been told that EC is done to 1) cut down on diaper use and 2) have the baby potty-trained sooner. I'm not sold on this. I know there are many people who will tell me different, but it's my opinion that it's the parents that are getting trained, not the babies. And, it just sounds messy and gross.

I believe that Caril Ann Fugate is just as guilty as Charles Starkweather, and she should stop whining about how hard her life is. She deserved the same fate as Charlie, but is now a free woman, so she should count her blessings. My step-grandpa was a Lancaster County Deputy when Caril and Charlie went on their killing spree, and sat next to Starkweather, with his gun pointed at Charlie the whole time, on the trip back from Wyoming.

April 7, 2010

Spring is finally here...I think. We had a wonderful Easter weekend, the weather was perfect! It started raining last night. When Jeremy got up for work this morning, I heard it raining even harder, hoping it would be done by the time I go grocery shopping here in a little bit. At 7:47, the boys and I were walking out the door to take them to school, and came upon a very unpleasant sight.


We're in a wind advisory till 7 tonight, and this snow is ridiculous! The flakes are about the size of quarters and they're wet. Very wet. They hit and they stick. As we were running out to the car, it felt like we were getting hit with a thousand mini snowballs.


So, today is April 7 and it's snowing. Tomorrow my baby turns 6, and his birthday present will arrive a day late. Hopefully it'll be warm and dry enough this weekend to actually play with it!

Floor Redo

There's nothing like redoing your child's floor to make you realize that they have even more crap than you had originally thought!

The Bug had a spot on his floor that was beyond gross. It looked fine, but if you put your head on the floor, or when it got hot in his room, you could smell it. The Bug, Mr. Awesome, Odin, and Gracie had all peed on the same spot at one point or another. I cleaned and cleaned that spot with everything but bleach. It still smelled. I was finally able to convince Jeremy that we needed to replace it.

We spend last Thursday and Friday getting everything out of the room. It was raining Saturday morning-afternoon, so we got started ripping up the old floor. It was...interesting...

As you can see, the carpet was in really good shape - it just smelled. Really bad. The previous owners had used 50,000 bottles of glue to secure the carpet, so there was a lot of scraping to do around the edges. Other than that, we found some gorgeous linoleum and tiles...

I think the red and white checked was my favorite. It's a good thing the boys were at my in-laws' that day. I'm pretty sure Bug would have wanted to keep the red & white.
We even found a couple of tin can lids tacked to the floor! When we ripped those off, we were able to peek into the basement.

Once that was done, I repainted the tan walls and touched up the red wall. By the time I was done, it had stopped raining, so we were able to pick up the sub-flooring. The boys spent the night with the in-laws, then we took them to my mom & dad's on Sunday so we could get the flooring in. It went fairly easy, but I don't have pictures just yet. I got the new baseboards painted and will be marking where to cut them today, and we're hoping to get those cut and installed within the next couple of days, so I'll take pictures and show you the finished product as soon as it's all done!

Now, I need to find some time to get a few other (fun) things done, like making my blog rounds and creating some of the ideas I have floating around in my head!