On the road to Omaha

I'm a little behind in my blog posting for the week since I just wasn't in the writing mood.  With the weather here being just about perfect (77° during the day and 60° at night) my spirits are up and I'm ready to tackle writing something.

We spent the majority of the fourth of July week in Omaha staying with Jo's sister's family.  The Friday before we drove over to Madison and stayed with Kathy enjoying some Rocky Rocco's pizza for dinner.  Then it was early to bed so we could be up and on the road early Saturday morning with Kathy and Drew joining us for the 7 hour trek to Omaha.  Unfortunately we had to violate the car trip rules I grew up with (sorry Dad, but I really tried) and actually stop once on the way out even though the car didn't need gas.  I was overruled by my travel buddies on that.  The problem is modern cars with their combination of gas mileage and gas tank size travel too far.  Anyway, we made it successfully and in reasonably good time as the traffic, while busy, didn't really back up anywhere.

It was great seeing everyone in Omaha again.  The weather was significantly cooler than last year (when it was in the 90's most of the week) which made our morning runs much more enjoyable, although splashing in the pool a little less so.  Our grand nieces and nephew have all grown so much and our niece and nephews are starting to hit major decade birthday's (like the 40's!), makes you feel a bit old especially the part of being a great aunt/uncle.  It was also interesting to see my nephews who are now uncles themselves play with their nieces/nephew the way I used to. 

We tried to have a bit of an adventure each day while we were there.  This included an enjoyable day out playing 9 holes of golf with Mike.  Kathy, Jo, and I went out as a threesome and had a great time although we played by a much looser set of rules than used on the PGA tour and as a result all had scores we were happy with.  Mike and Drew followed us and held themselves to a much stricter set of play which meant more difficult shots for them to contend with since they weren't using our ball adjustment rules.  Kathy had the shot of the day for our group as she had one heading for the water that hit rocks bounced twice before landing back in the fairway.

Other adventures included a day at the Omaha zoo one.  Always interesting to see the wide variety of creatures that inhabit this planet and their desert dome exhibit was interesting, especially since a few of the animals seemed to have the run of the place.  One evening we enjoyed the local minor league baseball team, the Stormchasers.  You can't beat a hot dog and lemonade while watching some future major leaguers.  While it didn't measure up to our hometown racing sausages, they did have the racing dairy products between one of the innings (which consisted of a racing cheese block, milk carton, cow, and yogurt container).  I think the cheese slice won.

The rest of the time was spent lazing around the pool, playing computer games, doing some reading,  baby sitting our niece (ok, Jo and Kathy did almost all of that) and just generally catching up with the family.  It was a relaxing week for me and it was hard to get back in the car for the long ride home last weekend.