Sarah's Graduation

Sarah graduated earlier this year, but they hadn't had a chance to have her graduation ceremony with all the craziness that had gone on with their house and other things, so we got to be there for her graduation tonight!

She is a huge Star Wars fan, so the front row all had light sabers, she walked in to music from Star Wars and then after all was said and done, she had to defend herself as everyone attacked with the light sabers!

 Don & Alicia now have 3 kids that have graduated their homeschool!  (Sarah had her first birthday the week that Lennard and I got engaged!)

 Once we got the kids in bed, Grandpa presented Sarah with 12 settings of china for her graduation present!

A bunch of them started to watch Lord of the Rings afterwards, but I was tired, so I went upstairs to go to bed.  I was just sitting on the couch for a while when Alicia came up and then we ended up talking until 1:00am!  Yikes!

Children's Museum

The kids have been so excited to go to the Children's Museum ever since we told them we were going to Omaha.  They were more than ready to go this morning!  We borrowed Don & Alicia's car and made our way downtown.  When we went before, it was May and school was in, so, although it was busy, it wasn't anything like it was today!  It was so busy that the parking lot was full and we had to go across the street to park.  There were kids everywhere!  

Ben would have stayed and played in the water table all day long.

 He absolutely loved building dams and watching the water be diverted.

 Emma tried out everything.  She thought it was pretty cool to 'x-ray' daddy!

 She also got to go shopping, bake things, make pizza, etc.  She was a bit of a whirlwind going from one thing to the next!

 Both of them loved the mechanics garage.

 Even daddy got right into it!

 Both kids loved getting to play with the balls.  There were so many different machines, vacuums, pulleys, etc that it kept them entertained for a long time!

 Upstairs, Ben loved all the building things.

 Emma, of course, headed straight to the paints and crafts!

 We watched some science experiments with dry ice.

 It was a great day exploring and playing!

We hadn't stopped for lunch, so we were all starving!  We decided to stop at HuHots and have something to eat.  So yummy!

Relax

After a few very busy days, we had a super relaxing, hang-out kind of day.  We played cards and games until noon and then headed out to the movies.  I took the kids to see the movie "Sing" while the rest of them went to the new Star Wars movie - "Rogue One".  After dinner, we all headed downtown to a light show.  It was definitely one of the chillier nights, but we all had fun.  There were horses that had been decorated/painted all around the square that we checked out.  Emma wanted to make sure Scamp was in the picture with her.  Ben didn't want a picture... at all... so that's the best I got.  Oh well.

Pictures, Dinner and Games

As soon as breakfast was done, we all got cleaned up and ready to go get family pictures!  It was a little 'fun' getting everyone where they needed to be in the time limit that they gave us (30 minutes for 12 people!).  

Grandpa with all his grandchildren.

Nichols Family with Grandpa

Grandpa with his descendants

The kids got to go play at a park with their cousins for a while in the afternoon and then we had a full blown turkey dinner!  So many delicious foods!

 The kids loved the poppers and getting to open their 'prizes'.  They were the only ones who thought the crowns were cool enough to wear them!

 After dinner, we got the kids situated downstairs with a movie and popcorn so that Grandpa could babysit while the rest of us went off to Entrap Games.  We were locked in a room and had to solve puzzles and clues to get out of the room.  We escaped with 20 minutes to spare!

Presents and Gingerbread

After a yummy breakfast with everyone, the kids got to open a present from Aunt Alicia and Uncle Don!  They were thrilled to find remote control bumper cars!  Thankfully, Aunt Alicia was thinking ahead and had bought lots of batteries to put in them!

 They played with them all morning!  Every time they managed to run into each other the guys would pop off the seats!

 Just after lunch, we went to the Mormon Trail Center and looked at the gingerbread house display.

 This little house was before we'd even got into the building!

 There were SO many creations to look at.  The kids were given a scavenger hunt checklist to find things, so they were kept really busy looking for items on the displays.

 After looking at all the different houses and creations, we headed upstairs to go through the visitors center.  Emma loved getting to dress up!

 They even got to try out a handcart!

On our way home from the Center, we made a 'quick' stop at Penzey's!  I shouldn't have gone in, but man it's hard to resist buying more spices!  We got a couple new ones to try out and restocked some of our favorites.

Dinner was schnitzel and spaetzle - as only Dad can make it.  So delicious!

Flight to Omaha

We were up and on the road in good time today.  We got to Great Falls and went to Golden Corral for lunch.  The kids love getting to pick whatever they want, so it was a good lunch.  

When we got our plane tickets they assigned us seats all over the plane.  We were concerned about the kids being by themselves on the plane, so we wanted to make sure we got to the airport in plenty of time to get it sorted out.  Lennard dropped us off  and then went to park the van (out in the back 40!).  As we were waiting for him, there was a lady that was quite upset.  I could tell that something was going on, but I just wanted to keep the kids occupied.  After watching her yell and stomp off I figured that she had probably missed a flight.  When Lennard came in I told him about what was going on and jokingly said that I hoped she wouldn't be on our flight...

We got our bags checked in and headed up to go through security.  I got all the bags and shoes and coats put on the conveyor belt to go through the xray machine and then stepped through the metal detector.  The kids were fine, but when I went through it dinged.  They told me it wasn't because of metal, but that I'd been randomly selected to have further screening.  They swabbed my hands and when they put it in their machine it blinked red and said Explosives!  (Whatever)

I was then pulled aside and told that I'd have to go through more screening!  They wanted to know which bag was mine and I sort of laughed since I'd packed ALL the bags.  I told them which one I happened to carry into the airport and they went through it with a fine toothed comb!  Everything was emptied, swabbed, etc.  Ridiculous!  Even the pack of cards was ripped open and shuffled through.

Once they swabbed everything, my bag, my shoes, my earphones and my iphone all tested positive for explosives.  Really?!  By this time, Lennard and the kids were sitting there getting antsy, so I told them to just go to the gate and try to get the seats figured out.  Lennard went to hand me my passport and boarding pass and the security guard just about hand a conniption!  "You can't hand her anything!"  So he handed her my stuff and went off with the kids.  They re x-rayed the stuff that they were concerned about and (of course) found nothing to be concerned about.  Then came the fun part where they took me in a separate room to pat me down!  I don't know if any of you have had the pleasure of being pat down... but it's a little more invasive than I care to experience again!  I did have to laugh when she asked, "Are you able to stand unassisted for more than 4 minutes?" - This was after I'd been standing next to her for about 20 minutes while she went through my entire bag!  I just looked at her and said, "Obviously!"  I was not impressed by this time.  I mean... use some common sense.  They pat me down, including the bottoms of my feet, (which I've been walking around their airport in stocking feet now) and then scan it... if it is positive - what do you think would be in their airport!  So crazy.  Anyways - after all that, and not finding anything, they sent me on my way!  Of course, I had to repack everything!  Grrr!

I finally got to the gate, and Lennard said that they were attempting to get us seats together.  That's when we figured out that the woman from earlier was in fact on our flight!  The gate agent went and asked if she would move seats and she refused!  They managed to get the kids and I seated together and Lennard ended up being up a couple rows.

We had a bit of a wait at the airport still, so the kids got to pull out some of their activities to keep them busy.

We finally boarded the plane and discovered that we would be sitting by the 'grumpy' lady!  The flight attendant assured us when we boarded that anyone seeing that they would be sitting by a child would want to move seats... but not her!  I sort of had to laugh when Emma proceeded to talk to her the entire flight!  Ha! ha!  Thankfully, the lady was nice to Emma otherwise I would have made a stink and had her moved!

We got in to Minneapolis and found our gate quickly.  Lennard and Emma went to McDonald's and got dinner for us (since it was the closest and quickest thing).  We'd half finished eating when they announced that there was a gate change, so we loaded everything up and went to our new gate!

We were all very tired when we got to Omaha, but the kids were thrilled to see Grandpa and Aunt Alicia!  After the drive home and a quick visit with everyone, we all headed to bed.  Such a long day!

Merry Christmas!

We woke up before the kids!  In fact... I sort of woke them up!  Ha! Ha!  Lennard had gone out to the living room, turned on the Christmas lights and was patiently waiting.  I went and told my parents that we could start any time... and then I went upstairs and started playing Christmas songs/sounds in the hallway.  Ben was up immediately and jumping up and down.  Emma took a few minutes more, but they were pretty excited to get out to the living room.  The best part was when they headed down the hallway, the first thing they did was run to give grandma and grandpa a hug before they even looked at the gifts under the tree or their stockings.  (Melted my heart)

One of the first things they noticed after that was that Santa had eaten the cookies and milk!  There was part of a cookie left on the plate and Ben asked, "Does Santa have germs?"  When we said 'no', he quickly asked, "Can I eat the rest of his cookie?"  We all got a good laugh out of that!

 They got to open their stockings and then we had family prayers together.  Then we got down to business of opening gifts!

We had so much fun taking turns opening gifts.  We all got spoiled and it was so fun having my parents there with us.  One of the very last gifts that got opened was a Simon Dewey painting of the woman at the well.  Lennard had written on the tag - "To my wife.  From your hubby"  Emma picked it up and said, "To my wiffy?  Who's wiffy?"  It took us a minute to figure out that she was pronouncing the 'e' at the end of wife.  We definitely laughed!  What a fun time when kids are learning to read.

After opening gifts and playing with some of them, we had to get ready and head to church!  It was a beautiful Sacrament meeting.  The kids got to sing with the Primary in church.  It was the perfect way to spend Christmas morning.

When Lennard finished up at church, we headed out to my parents house for Christmas dinner. Since we leave tomorrow and we're going to miss our annual Fish Pond, mom let the kids 'fish' for their presents today.

 Ben was thrilled to get a Star Wars blanket!  His whole room is Star Wars now!

 Emma fished for her present and Grandpa tricked her with a phone book first!  ha! ha!  Then she got to fish again and got her real present.

 Getting all kinds of nail polish was a great gift!

 Ben had fun getting rolled up in his blanket afterwards!

It was a great way to spend the afternoon together.  We had to head home in the early evening so that we could get packed up, but I loved getting to spend some time with my parents.