Away from Home

Kristen recently took her first trip without her Mommy and Daddy. She went to St Paul Minnesota with our church youth group. They packed books at Books for Africa, measured and packaged food at Feed my Starving Children and helped serve in a couple of homeless kitchens. They of course also made time to go to the mall of america and she say a St Paul Saints game. I think it was a very rewarding experience for her and I know she can't wait to go on another trip. She had her cell phone and called home often. We all missed each other because we've never been apart like that before. We were all glad when she came home.

I did it!

Well I did this a few weeks ago now but I've been so busy that I am just know putting it on the blog. I cut my hair. I went to the beauty shop and had 18 inches cut off my hair. I have sent it to locks of love. It's something I've talked about doing for a couple of years now and I finally got the courage. I am posting a couple of pictures so you can see.

Butterflies

Saturday we had some errands to run in Omaha. Eric had a wrench to exchange at Sears and he needed some new tools from Harbor Freight. We also had to make a stop at Sams for some wipes. Since we were already in Omaha we decided we'd stop at the zoo and see the new butterfly and insect house. We thought we'd just go in take a look and leave, maybe an hour. Little did we know the new exhibit was soo soo busy you had to get a special time card thing telling when it was your turn to go through the exhibit when you walked into the zoo. So we had about 3 hours to kill when we got there. So we looked around, had a snowcone. It was a pretty nice day a little on the warm side but not so much you felt like you were melting. Christopher and Alissa made some friends while we had our snowcones. It was all very nice. The butterfly house is pretty cool. The kids loved it. We had to watch Christopher extra close to make sure he didn't try to grab one but he did fairly well. Then we went to the insect part and they had a window into the butterfly hatchery so you could see the cocoons and butterflies emerging. I really liked that part. They also had some cool sculptures outside of butterflies that I thought were just beautiful. It was a very nice day just a little longer than expected.

He's Home! He's Home!

A little more than a week ago my brother came home. It had been a long, way too long experience and we are happy to have him back. We had a little camping party last weekend. Despite some pretty serious thunderstorms over night we had a great time. We ate together, fished. I did not have to bait hardly any hooks, including my own, or take off hardly any fish because I just sent them to PJ and Dad. Saturday Grandma came out and Sherry and Bob. Melissa and Eli had spent most of the weekend out with us and Chihiyo also came out. Dad grilled a turkey that was delicious thanks to my sauce. He had said if it didn't turn out my sauce was to blame so I told him I get all the credit if it does turn out then. We all talked and laughed and even Grandma reeled in a bullhead or bubblehead as Christopher calls them. Christopher and Eli played all weekend. Which unfortunately included throwing sand at each other. It's so nice to have PJ back now it feels like I can start getting back to my normal life again even with the hole losing my Mom as left. Oh yeah news channel 6 came out and we were on the news last week.