Visiting Lincoln Part 1

 Eric had his last meeting for his "young professional lawyers the BAR wants for leadership, who want to do other stuff good too" in Lincoln, and I thought since it was the last time (I think) someone would pay us to drive out to Lincoln we should take everyone along and have a family vacation.  Most people don't think of Lincoln as a great vacation spot, but coming from Scottsbluff where the most exciting thing is the annual corn husking competition, if is a veritable paradise.

The first day Eric had meetings so the kids and I were on our own for entertainment.  Everyone wanted to go to the Children's Museum, but it didn't open first thing, so we went to Barnes and Noble, and the mall first.  This was the "Merry-Go-Round-Of-Death" that was at the mall.

notice Ethan with his Starbucks hot chocolate!  He is my true chocolate conisuer.

I have never been on one that sped up and stayed quite so fast, lasted so long, and took forever to slow back down.  Basically in the first 10 seconds I was trying to keep down my breakfast, and that lasted another 400 minutes. 

At the Children's Museum (which is most definitely the coolest one we have ever been to) we were a little disappointed that the water section was being remodeled, but still managed to spend 4.5 hours playing with: prairie dog tunnels,

 face paint

Ella wanted me to do it too.  We were fairies.

puppet shows,

fighting over stage sounds,

 large chairs,

small grocery stores,

and of course the space area.

I know they are space suits, but every time I see this I think "We are the knights who say 'Ni'!"

We finally finished up and went over to meet Eric.  His meeting was right across from the state capital, so we spent a few minutes seeing where Eric has gone to argue in front of the state Supreme Court and Court of Appeals.

Supreme Court

Seeing the Court of Appeals (kind of)

Where the state legislature meets

On the outside of the building all the county names are inscribed, but we had never managed to find ours.  Ethan had sharp eyes this time and we managed to find it while we walked around the grounds.

Having Too Much Fun

I am supposed to be doing something productive, like getting files ready or learning Quickbooks, but I am procrastinating by doing laundry and blogging.

We've had 2 birthdays and a trip to Lincoln lately and I should probably post about them. I tried to find ONE decent picture from my birthday, but they made me cry and I had to eat cookies (although cookies are the reason I didn't like the pictures in the first place so I've really hit rock bottom). So, yeah, I had a birthday. I'm old. Thank you to everyone who remembered me! We were all sick, but I had a great birthday anyways sitting around relaxing and eating 3/4 of Melissa's yummy blackberry cobbler all by myself. It was awesome, but no you will not be seeing any visual representation.

So I guess that leaves Lincoln and Ella's birthday. I'm too tired right now to fix the red eye in Ella's birthday pictures, so I guess you get to see pictures from our trip to Lincoln. Eric was there to go to a law conference on estate planning so we tagged along to have a little fun. We ended up all getting horribly sick, but we had a great time doing it!

We started out spending almost all day at the Children's Museum. It is amazingly fun and I took a thousand pictures but I'll just share a few favorites (and by favorites I mean my kids doing weird things).
First off the kids LOVED the water zone and walked away completely soaked. Not just a little wet. SOAKED. At one point I had to explain why dumping water on herself was not a good way to play to Olivia. I didn't really care but I was getting a few looks from other moms.
2nd: Here Ethan is in the construction zone. Most kids make paths for the trucks, or castles. Ethan made a representation of the Jedi Battle from Star Wars Episode 2, of course.
3rd: We travel 7 hours one way, spend tons of money on this vacation and what does Ethan want to do? Play on my brand new ipad. To be fair he was feeling a little under the weather and was super tired after playing at the museum for 5 hours, but still.
4th: I don't know why this cracks me up, but it does. I know about perspective, yada yada, but seeing the two older look so tiny on this giant chair but Livi looks big cracks me up (she was too scared to scoot all the way back on the huge thing).
We spent a lot of time in book stores (which I've decided is a sickness of mine, buying books. We have 9 bookcases in our house right now. 9!) and we got to see the movie Rio, and then we went to the Lincoln Children's Zoo. Ethan was a big hit with the gibbons (no surprise there, they are practically related (in a none evolution way)) And my sweet caterpillar and butterfly, which just seemed fitting.
The highlight of the whole trip though...swimming at the hotel. I think we could have just checked into the local Holiday Inn Express and the kids would have had just as much fun. We went swimming all the nights we were there and every morning when we went by Livi would cry that she wanted to "go swimming ight now" (not a miss print. She has a hard time with "r"). The morning we left she cried when she said good bye to the pool. It made me think a pool would be a good idea in our backyard, until I realized we would be able to use it all of 2 months out of the year.
We had fun, and I will leave you with what I watched for 2 hours. No joke: