Vacation, Pt. One

So we survived our first vacation with Raegan. It was really a lot of fun! We spent Monday and Tuesday in Omaha, Nebraska. We've been there for vacation a couple times before, and we always really enjoy going there. Raegan did beautifully in the car on the way up, and minus a ten minute stretching of wailing on and off, did fairly well on the way back too (especially considering that by the time we started back she had only had a 30 minute nap all day and it was 2:30!)

We made it out of town by 9:00 a.m Monday morning (which considering our original goal was 8:00, that's not too bad). We packed sandwiches to save some money, and stopped at York, Nebraska to eat. Our first activity was the Strategic Air and Space Museum about 20 miles outside of Omaha. It actually worked out really well to do things in the order we did, because it broke up the trip a little bit and gave us a chance to move around. We went there the last time we went to Omaha in 2005, but they had some new exhibits and a kids' playplace that wasn't there before.

I always go a bit slower than the boys do because I like to read all of the signs. I learned that you would only live about 10 seconds in space without a spacesuit before your whole body would shut down. Didn't know that! I also walked through the traveling exhibit about Germany in the 1930s and learned more about the whole euthanasia movement that they had going on at the time. Horrible, horrible people.

Outside the SAC. Isn't that just postcard perfect?

Raegan, just chillin' out watching Zane "fly"

One of the traveling exhibits was Anakin's podracer from Star Wars. Very cool!

After we left the SAC we went to drop our stuff off at our hotel, then went over to Old Market in Downtown Omaha. It's basically a collection of a huge variety of stores. Lots of different types of art and "hippie" type stores. Lots of incense. :) We walked by several people playing guitars with their case open for money. It was interesting to see adults just sitting in the outdoor patios of restaurants on a Monday afternoon drinking a glass of wine or eating appetizers. The best store that we found was basically a swap meet inside a store. It was just a jumble of toys, collectibles, and random this and that. Luke and I found so many toys from our childhood. Very cool! Our other really cool find was The Passageway. We were trying to find this toy store on a map, and we finally figured out that you had to go down this ramp to a whole corrider of stores underneath the stores on the street. As my husband said, it was very "Harry Potter." :)

We also went to the Gene Leahy Pedestrian Mall. I'm not really sure why it's called a mall, because it was just a park, but it was very nice. There were walking paths and some sculptures, and these huge metal slides set on the side of a hill. Zane and I had fun going down them!

After Old Market, we went to Fuddruckers (best hamburgers!) then back to our motel. Zane and Luke swam for awhile, then we all turned in early for the night. I recall why I got Raegan out of our bed at home: she thinks that since I'm right there I must feed her every time she stirs all night long. Blech! I've gotten very used to her waking up one, maybe two, times at night, so the FIVE times she woke me up that night were not appreciated!

This is getting reaaaaaalllly long, so I'm going to post our pictures from the zoo in the next post. I need to go get some stuff done before Raegan wakes up from her nap! More to come......