Nebraska Wrap Up

I think I'm finally caught up on writing about our time Nebraska, I just have a few more pictures to share. I'm sure there are some stories I missed or things I already forgot about. What's not been depicted in our posts is all the everyday stuff...preparing and eating meals, conversation, disciplining, watching American Ninja Warrior all together, attending more baseball games, eating out, playing games, staying up late on long summer nights, doing chores, and well, just living life as family. 

Fitting in some time outside

Cael and I did several more skateboard practice sessions in the evenings when it was cooler. A couple of times he might have just been trying to avoid going to bed. But regardless of his motivations he still was getting really good. I hope he continues to have an interest in the sport and practice. Hopefully I can keep up my practice too since I felt like I was getting some of my old skills back as well. 

Blake pitching to Cael

One of the many more times we got to watch Eli pitch

Oceans of Fun and Worlds of Fun

To wrap up our time in Nebraska we took a family trip down to Kansas City to go to Oceans of Fun (a water park) and Worlds of Fun (an amusement park). We drove down early Monday morning and got there in time to check into our cottage and still make the early bird entry to Oceans of Fun. Our cottage was just on the other side of the Oceans of Fun parking lot. So it was super convenient to hop over to the park.

The view from our cottage. There's a roller coaster in the background. 

We spent most of the first day at the water park side. We tried out every water attraction the park had to offer, from slides, to splash pads, the lazy river, and of course the wave pool. My personal favorite was a newer slide called Predator's Plunge where you stood upright over a trap door, and after a short countdown the trap door opens and you drop into a fast and winding tube of craziness. Sadly they only had one of the three slides like that working so the wait was quite long even despite it being a fairly slow day. Another good one was the Diamond Head slides. They weren't very busy, but if you laid down just right you could get going pretty fast and get pretty high up on the wall on some of the turns. I almost got flipped over a couple times. The boys also spent a lot of time on lily pad obstacles. I think they felt they could put their Ninja Warrior skills to the test. It was fun to watch and try a couple times with them. It was a fun, sun-filled day, and it wasn't even done. The water park closes at dusk, but the amusement park stays open a couple of extra hours. So we made our way over to squeeze in a few roller coaster rides before the night was done.

Our plan for Tuesday was to spend the entire day at the Worlds of Fun side of things, but for better or worse our entry got delayed by rain. I personally think it was a blessing because I felt absolutely wiped out from the day before and welcomed the nap I got after breakfast. The rain looked like it was going to let up after lunch so we went and grabbed food at Taco Bell just down the road before heading into the park. Luckily, even with the delay, we had plenty of time to ride all of the rides multiple times and then some. It helped that the lines were super short. The longest we waited to get on a ride was probably 10 minutes except for one time where we waited to ride the front car of Mamba. The only downside was that because park attendance was slow they usually only had one car running on each ride, which felt like it dragged out even the shortest lines.

It sometimes took some convincing to get Eli and Cael to try out a ride that initially looked scary. But usually once they tried it once they wanted to immediately ride it again. The wooden roller coaster, Prowler, was the most exhilarating to me. Blake described it well as feeling like you were skiing, just a little bit more violent and fast. Just about every turn came after a little bit of a quick up and down like you were going over a snowy mogul/bump. Patriot and Mamba were also among my favorites because they were pretty fast and smooth. The kids of course really liked two of my least favorite rides: Spinning Dragons and Boomerang. Boomerang was just too violent and shaky. And Spinning Dragons, well, spun too much for my taste. Luckily with that one we could position ourselves in the car such that you wouldn't spin that much if you didn't want to. But of course most of the time Eli and Cael wanted to spin as much as possible. Alas. We did take one little break in the evening to watch an extreme sports show where they had bikers, gymnasts, and trampolinists performing impressive tricks.

A panorama of Spinning Dragons

Cael waiting to get on Boomerang

Eli waiting to get on Spinning Dragons, probably for like the 100th time :)

Still all smiles at the end of the day 

Overall we had a great time. It had been several years since I had been to these two parks, so it was fun to check out again. Ranking wise, I still think Cedar Point in Ohio is better, but I'd go again in a few years. Although next time I think we'd try to bring in our own food because my one complaint was that the food there was incredibly overpriced and not even very good. But you live and learn. It was a great way to wrap up our time together. 

Laser Tag and Arcade Games

On one of the days that we needed to get the boys out of the house, we took advantage of the kids' coupon book from school and did some laser tag and arcade games. Laser tag itself was still more expensive than we thought even with the coupon. So we played one game with all four of us, and then we let the boys play one more game by themselves. 

The game we played with the boys was a lot of fun. It was everyone for themselves. Katie and I destroyed Eli and Cael. Although Cael did beat me on the one stat that I usually always win: worst accuracy. My theory is that if you have a gun with unlimited ammo, you might as well just shoot like crazy. I pretty much just hold down the trigger the entire game. Well apparently Cael had a similar theory, but he just hit his target fewer times. Cael and Eli were also very good at hiding in the decent sized laser tag arena. When they played their second game we could watch a surveillance video feed of various spots in the arena. It seemed like they spent most the game just trying to find each others. It was hilarious to watch. 

After the games of laser tag we let the boys have 10 tokens each to play arcade games. They mainly focused on games with good ticket rewards so that they could pick out prizes after they were done. Good times were had all around.

Rolling balls up a ramp to score points and tickets for prizes

The basketball game was tougher than it looked

More Climbing In Nebraska

Of course, one of the things we did in Nebraska was even more rock climbing. We got out a couple of times by ourselves and were able to work through all the 5.10 routes and easier as well as piece together most of the 5.11 routes. UNL had some really great routes for us to work on. Katie had a 5.11c corner route that she really liked that felt a lot like some of our favorite kinds of corner/balancy routes at Inside Moves in Grand Rapids. I tried my hand at a 5.12a, but it was definitely above my skill level.  We also got out one more time with the boys.

Cael climbing into the sunlight

Eli a little over halfway up the wall 

Little monkey

Looking up and reaching far

Hanging on

In between routes the boys didn't rest. They bouldered hard. 

This move makes me think of a bat

And, the squishy seats were fun to play on as well

We also got in a visit to Approach rock climbing gym in Omaha. It wasn't anything that we'd go out of our way to go back to. But it made for a nice day trip.

The walls weren't nearly as high as at UNL, but there were still some decent routes

After climbing in Omaha we had to get some tacos to refuel, so we checked out Voodoo Tacos. The restaurant had a cajun theme and there were definitely some unique tacos among the classic favorites. Among the most unique was the alligator sausage taco. Yes, alligator. Katie was excited to see there was a cheesecake taco on the dessert menu, so of course we had to try that too. 

Our Voodoo Taco spread. When we saw how big the tacos were we realized we didn't need 5 tacos...6 including the cheesecake dessert taco! 

The cheesecake taco with chocolate sauce. Katie said that it didn't have enough cheesecake filling. It pretty much tasted like a beignet. 

Golfing in Nebraska

For some reason in Nebraska I just didn't feel like posting much even though we did a lot. And since then we've either been busy or without WiFi. So now I have a bit of catching up to do with the blog. So bear with me as I play a bit of catch up.

Getting out golfing was always one of the goals for our visit to Nebraska. Both Blake and I started golfing when we were kids, probably thanks to our dad's enthusiasm for the sport. But we don't get to play together much. Maybe we fit in a round every few years if we're lucky. So I threw my clubs in the car with the hope we'd have a few opportunities to play. Unfortunately the weather was against us for most of June. Pretty much every day in Nebraska got into the high 90's, and a good number of days broke 100. For those that don't know that is not the most ideal golfing weather. But despite this we did get out a couple of times.

As Katie mentioned in her last post the first time I pulled the clubs out of the car was not with Blake but our nephews. Blake had signed them up for golf lessons. So on one of the days that we picked them up from their lesson we took the boys to the driving range to check out what they had learned. The boys enjoyed themselves so much that they convinced Blake to take them to another driving range closer to their house after dinner later that same day. It was really cool to see how far they had come in such a short time period

They did so well that a couple days later on Father's Day Blake decided to take them out to the Jim Ager Memorial junior golf course for their first golf outing. It went about as expected. The boys had some good hits but struggled with consistency. Though I suppose the same could be said for both me and Blake as well. That's the game of golf for ya :) Probably the main thing we had to work with them on was etiquette: where to stand when not hitting, when to be quiet, etc. Everyone had at least one decent hole. I got a couple pars and won the round. Cael even got a bogey on the first hole. Overall, it was a lot of fun! I think Blake is hoping to get them out one or two more times this year when our dad is around. In a couple of years they'll probably be doing better than me.

Cael, Eli, and I walking off to find where our drives landed

Cael putting as Eli lines up his next shot

Crossing the bridge on the final hole

Blake, Eli, and Cael after their first golf outing together

A few days later Blake, Cael, Eli, Katie, and myself went mini-golfing at a place not to far from their house. The boys decided they wanted to play the harder of the two courses. Everyone did well but had at least one not-so-great hole. Some more than others. Despite having the lead most of the game, I struggled through on one of the last few holes, letting Blake take over and maintain the lead. He won the round. I took second. Katie proudly took third (cuz she was determined to beat the boys). And the boys followed. But only Eli and I had a hole-in-one. 

Time was running out of our month in Nebraska, and because it had yet to cool down Blake and I had yet to get out for our round with just the two of us. So despite the heat, on the last Saturday of the month we got up early to play nine holes out at Woodland Hills Golf. It's a course we had wanted to play a few years ago but got rained out. Luckily this year we, despite some thunderstorms in the forecast, we were able to play. It was quite windy however. On the first hole it was like hitting straight into the face of a wind tunnel. But the wind also helped keep things a bit cooler, so it all worked out.

Blake started out better than I did. But we both shot well on any hole where we couldn't really see where we were going. There was one hole in particular where it looked like fairway had 4 sand traps all lined up across it, but in fact the farthest left trap was a good deal of distance past the other three on the other side of the fairway as it turned to the right. We knew this because this course was one of those fancy courses where they have a map/gps unit on the cart we were using. So both Blake and I just hit as hard as we could over the first three traps and hoped for the best. Blake's ball landed within 10 yards of the green right on the fringe of the rough. My ball was dead center of the fairway 70 or so yards to the green. That hole was the turning point for my round. This type of thing happened to me at least two more times where I had to hit kind of blind and my shots would end up on or close to the green. I ended our round of nine with 4 pars and one bogey, which meant despite a poor start and one disaster hole, I won the round. 

I'd like to think that means I won the month. When my dad and I have our golf weekend its almost always inevitable that we each win a round and have to do a tie break round of mini-golf. Blake and I went a little out of order. But we were tied after playing the junior golf course and mini-golf. So technically this round was our tie breaking round. But in the end it doesn't really matter because we're not that competitive about it. It was just awesome to get out and play together. We would have liked to get out a couple more times, and in hindsight we probably could have endured the heat because the times we got out ended up not being that bad. But I'm still very thankful for the amount we were able to get out and play. Hopefully with the boys starting to play the family tradition of going golfing when we get together will continue.

Nebraska Summer

We've been busy in Nebraska this summer with Blake, Barbie, and our nephews. One of the first things we did was visit the Omaha Zoo. This zoo is the best one I have ever been too. Seriously. It's really cool how most of the animal enclosures are constructed to feel more open and like a natural environment. 

The giraffe area was recently renovated

The giraffes are my absolute favorite

The elephant exhibit is new to the Omaha Zoo this year

Eli found an elephant statue to ride

Cael had to try the elephant out too

The new Alaskan Adventure splash park, which is now Cael's new favorite part of the zoo

We were able to see a polar bear feeding. Oddly, it was being fed celery despite it's normal diet of seals...a seal meal is probably too gory for children's eyes. 

The brown bear was able to catch its food from a tall perch 

The tiger was roaming about hungrily. A renovation of the big cats exhibit area is next, so it will be cool to see how their space improves in the next few years. 

Of course we've had to introduce our active nephews to another sport (the best one I think) and bring them climbing. Lincoln's only climbing gym is on the University of Nebraska Lincoln (UNL) campus. With it being on a college campus, getting permission to climb had all the commonly found red tape of academia. Finding free parking on campus is also impossible. Frankly, all the hoops we had to jump through were annoying. But, thankfully the route setting is quality and we've returned several times and enjoyed ourselves. We were surprised and excited to see how well Eli and Cael did with climbing. They were much improved from when we climbed with them at our wedding celebration nearly three years ago. We're excited to return to the climbing gym with them a couple more times this month. 

Two brothers climbing side by side

Three of us climbing together

Brandon giving some bouldering tips

They're still at it! 

The boys were given skateboards for Christmas, so Brandon brought his along to do some practice with them. Lincoln also has an indoor skateboard park/school, so the boys were able to get an introductory lesson one Saturday morning. Since then they've done some more practice around the neighborhood, and we've been watching cool, professional skateboard videos on youtube. 

Learning to push off and get on the skateboard

All of the open skate/skate school participants

Skateboard practice

Mastering some skillz

Though not technically skateboarding, this is a fun way to ride too

Brandon balancing on the rail

Looking cool while practicing flip tricks

The boys have also taken some golf lessons this month. We've spent some time practicing in the backyard with wiffle golf balls, and we've been at the driving range using real golf balls. Brandon, Blake, and the boys even tried out a 3-par junior golf course. 

Driving range practice

And, finally, baseball, baseball, baseball... eating, sleeping, and breathing baseball. We've been to practices and multiple games to see the boys play. And, when we're not at a practice or game, there's usually a baseball game on TV. Although, the Royals haven't been winning since Brandon and I have arrived in Lincoln, so we may be bad luck and at risk of being kicked out of the house. Truly though it's been fun to see Eli and Cael learn the sport and play baseball. 

Cael at bat with Blake doing coach pitch

Eli up to bat

Eli pitching an inning

Batting practice

Pitching practice