Omaha!!

A long time ago- when I was just a wee child, probably 10 or 11, my family went on one of our only family vacations and drove across the country in our broken air-condtioner suburban (in August) to go pick up my brother from basic training in Missouri.  On the way back, we stopped in Omaha and went to the zoo.  I remembered it being super cool, really big, and wishing we had had more time to spend there.

Ever since we moved to Iowa I have been wanting to go on a family trip to Omaha and take my kids to the zoo (and also I really wanted to go back too!).  But, since we aren't really spontaneous or "get out of your comfort zone" type people very often, it was 3 1/2 years later and we still hadn't gone.  When we found out we were moving to North Carolina in the next couple of months, I figured we weren't gonna make it and was disappointed we hadn't taken advantage while we were relatively close.  I shared my disappointment with Jon, really not thinking anything would come of it.  Then one Thursday morning I woke up, and Jon says to me,  "Let's go to Omaha today!"  I thought he was joking at first, but soon found out he had finished all his work for his current job and didn't start his next job for a few days and also had a few vacation days to spare.  So, going totally against our norm- and with next to zero planning (really difficult for me!), we packed up in a few hours and drove to Omaha.  It was so FUN!

We stopped in Des Moines on the way and just hung out at the mall, letting the kids play around while Jon checked out the new Apple watches.  Then we grabbed some food and ice cream cones at the food court and headed to Omaha!  On a side note, it was the kids first time having ice cream cones and we tried to show them how to lick them, but after 3 or 4 licks they both requested spoons to eat them with.  Silly kids.

The kids aren't used to sleeping in the same room so the hotel room that night was an interesting experience with neither child, nor adult, getting to sleep until about midnight but since we were now "go with the flow" type people, we didn't let it get to us :)  The next morning we woke up and went to the zoo!  Again, so much fun!!  The zoo was amazing with a huge indoor desert, indoor jungle, an awesome aquarium with sharks, and an underground portion with bats and Alligators and all sorts of creepy stuff!  We let the kids ride the carousel and train and even took them on the sky ride (which, in retrospect, I have no idea why they even let children on!  I was gripping onto Katie crazy tight the whole time!)  They loved them all and thought it was super cool to see the giraffes and ostriches from the air.  Katie kept yelling down, "Hi Mr. Ostrich!"  We didn't even hit all the exhibits but we were all exhausted by about 4pm and decided to head back to the hotel.

The hotel had a waterpark and we took the kids to that soon after checking in.  They loved it!  They were both even brave enough to go down the big slide all by themselves!  Then we went to dinner and were all asleep a lot earlier that night from the exhaustion of the busy day!  The next morning we hit the waterpark again and headed home after that!  It was so fun and I'm so glad we did it!