Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Welcome to our newest cousin / nephew!

Congratulations to Gina and Kip -- the proud new parents of baby Oliver William!
We can't wait to meet him this weekend! (Ellie has convinced us that we should go out for ice cream to celebrate "baby Olive" -- that's her nickname for her newest cousin...) :)
Sounds like a plan!

Sunday, July 27, 2008

The Dykstras visit Omaha...


...and claim to like it! :) It was a very fun weekend, at least for us. (You'd have to ask them if the 16 hours in the car was worth it.) They arrived on Friday and we didn't do much but hang out that afternoon. Ellie did manage to work in a few rounds of hide-and-seek with Papa withing minutes of their arrival. She seriously was planning out hiding spots for days before they came (after all, it was a "new house that Papa's never seen before -- he's NEVER gonna find me!") It was cute and the grandparents graciously obliged the hide and seek request. We went out to eat and did a mini driving tour of West-O (yeah, that's what they call west omaha around here...) and pretty much just hung out in the evening.


Saturday, we went "all the way" downtown to the Old market area - they do a nice Farmer's Market that we strolled around for a while. Ellie behaved herself because of the promise of the Children's Museum afterwards (also in the same neighborhood). That was also fun, especially for the kids and once again, the grandparents were good sports. After lunch, my mom and I headed to a quilt store in Gretna (about 10-15 minutes from here) called the Quilted Moose. I am not a quilter, but it was a fairly impressive fabric store! We left my dad with the sleeping children and his newspaper -- I think everyone was in a happy place that afternoon!


On Saturday night - my parents offered to watch the kids while we...wait for it... went out to eat! We were out of the house withing seconds of this offer --we headed "all the way" back downtown - ate a place called "stokes" -- a southwestern / american grill -- it was different, but good. Good to be out, that is! It was awesome - recharges us on the whole "find a babysitter" thing!


Sunday morning my dad and Frank went golfing - it turned out to be good weather for them (a little hot for me, but...) My mom and I and the kids went to Target (do we know how to entertain out of town guests or what??) and then hit one of the playgrounds at Lake Zorinsky that we have never been to before. It was a relaxing (except when Nathan was being a "crazy man" at target) morning. The photo above is of the gang right before they left (when are we going to learn to take these photos at the beginning of the visit?? Can you tell that Ellie isn't very good at good-byes?)
It wasn't a terrible good-bye - after all, we'll be in chicago next weeked to meet the new cousin and to celebrate birthdays with the other cousins! Can't wait!

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

We met our Omaha Pediatrician

Thanks to Nathan (and we all knew it would be Nathan, right?), we got our reason to find a new pediatrician...fast. Yesterday, we spent the morning running errands and playing outside. When we came in for lunch, I noticed that Nathan had a few (what I thought were) bug bites on his left arm. No big deal - he was rolling around in the grass and crawling around the garage, so I figured he just got into something buggy... By the end of lunch, his whole arm was covered with "bites" and it had spread to his back and sides. Before naptime, it had spread to his legs and face. And it didn't look like bug bites anymore - it looked like a red, sometimes bumpy awful rash. Of course, he did not seem fazed by his new condition at all. He seemed a little annoyed that I kept looking at him, but... We called a pediatrician's office that I had scoped out (luckily, all of ellie's preschool registration forms require the name of her doctor, so I had done some preliminary research...) and they were able to see us yesterday afternoon. Nathan slept his usual 2 hours at naptime and when he got up, he looked just as awful and was acting just as normal - weird. So, we went to see the new doctor (which Ellie was SO excited about - after all, it wasn't her visit...). The doctor walked in and instantly diagnosed it as hives. Sounds like something that I maybe should have recognized, but I have never seen anything like it in my life. It was a simple Benadryl fix (again, something I should have probably known...) and they were gone within a couple of hours. I was impressed with the office overall - I think it was a good pick "on the fly." The doctor asked me to call back in two days because she wanted to know how he was doing - I thought that was nice. In EGV, our pediatrician would always be like, "call us back if he's not better in a week." (And I really liked our doctor in Elk Grove, they just seemed more "don't call us unless something's wrong.") So, that was our adventure for yesterday -- leave it to Nathan to be the first one to need a doctor here!

Friday, July 18, 2008

Princess Camp Grand Finale



























Ellie finished her week of Princess Camp -- it was mixed reviews all week long. One minute, she was practicing her "moves" at home and talking about all of her dance friends and the next minute she was saying that her stomach hurt because she didn't want to go to princess camp (sad, I know, but...) Even if the drop-offs were not always completely smooth - she always came home in a good mood, (and therefore, I kept dropping her off!)

On Thursday, she came home with an "invitation" to her dance "show" on Friday at the end of class. That would be at 11:45 a.m. -- that leaves 15 minutes for the "show." She was so pumped about this -- she could not wait to show off her dances. So, we all went -- yes, even Frank -- that's another score for Omaha -- When you work 10 minutes away, you can scoot out for half an hour at lunchtime to see your little girl do a couple of dances. Coincidentally, every dancer except two of them had both their moms and dads present -- that's omaha for you -- nobody works very far away -- even if you worked "all the way downtown," it's still not far away!
The last picture is of Ellie before the music started -- strike a pose, girl! The song was something about big hair and big sunglasses. So, the purple sunglasses she is wearing was actually one of the crafts they did this week - they are all bedazzled with rhinestones... pretty fancy!
And Nathan could not get enough of this dancing thing -- after they finished the first dance, he was whining / chanting for "all done? more music! more music!" He clapped the loudest of anyone... "Good job, eh-wee -- hurray -- hurray!" It was cute.

Ellie is all thumbs up for dancing and princess camp now. (I think, partly because she knows it's over...) :) It was a welcome diversion for us this week -- pretty much took up the whole morning -- really broke up the day nicely! It makes me look forward to the routine of the fall with preschool starting up -- a different routine to fall into.
This weekend, we decided to touch up the paint in the family room -- of course, the previous owners did not leave any of the right color to do that with. So, we decided that we would re-paint instead. That will be a big project, since our family room connects to our kitchen and our eat-in area and the back "hall" to the garage -- we're going to start with 3 gallons of paint and go out for the fourth if we need it... I guess it'll be a couple of late nights this weekend (but it will be nice to have it done!)
More later -






Monday, July 14, 2008

Princess Camp, Day One (...and the new TV)


Ellie has been waiting for this day for a long time - thank goodness it finally arrived. She was up early this morning, packing her backpack full of all of the princess camp necessities: tap shoes (still...why??), ballet shoes, etc. etc.
She had so many questions - "what will we do first?" "do we have to check in when we get there?" "What will my teacher's name be?" "What color will her eyebrows be?" OK, I was with her until that last one...
We left the house in plenty of time (becuase I am still not confident with where everything is around here...even though it's not tough, and also because I continue to overestimate the amount of time it will take to get anywhere ... not nearly as long as you think it's going to...).
We got to the dance studio and it was quite obvious who was there for Princess Camp -- although, one girl was wearing plain clothes... the horror! (I guess her mom didn't call ahead of time... I bet she'll be fully outfitted by tomorrow...tap shoes and all!) Well, everything was going well until I went to leave -- Ellie freaked out - crying, clinging and all of that good stuff. "don't go" "I've never been here before" "Don't leave me here" "I dont' want to stay here" "I want to go home" For a kid that's been dropped off at daycare everyday for the last four years (and loved it) and for as excited as she was about "ballerina class" - it really kind of surprised me. (I guess four weeks of being with no one but me sort of ruined any kind of independence she had...) I convinced her to stay and I watched from the behind the two-way mirror (must be a dance studio thing...) She was (of course) fine within five minutes of me leaving and by the time I picked her up, she was gushing about all of the fun that was had -- they did "acrobats", crafts, snacks, dancing, and "rocking out" (is that different than dancing??). Anyways, she had a great time and she can't wait to go back tomorrow... thank goodness, call me a cynic - but as she's holding on to me for dear life at drop-off, part of me is thinking -- "uh-uh - we bought tap shoes for crying out loud... you are going to at least try this!"
The most ironic thing, perhaps was that I had to practically restrain nathan from breaking into the dance class room -- between trying to get ellie to stay and getting nathan to stay out, it was kind of a stressful 20 minutes or so... Nathan wanted so bad to be at "belly class" (that's ballet class in nathan-speak) -- maybe someday... after we try soccer or baseball or something... :)
In other (more exciting, frank would argue) news is we finally did it -- bit the bullet and bought one of those fancy-schmancy-big-ass-tv's. It's been a long time coming - frank has been talking about it for years (literally) and we said when we got to omaha, we would probably have a room big enough to accomodate one, and we do, so we did. It's pretty nice - better picture qualtiy and all that (which is important when you watch shows like the bachelorette like me...) :) We went to our new favorite store for home furnishings -- the Nebraska Furniture Mart. We like it there (and they are probably starting to like us there, too!) They just make it so darn easy to buy things -- I guess that's part of their winninng formula. I knew that if we went to look at TV's, we would end up buying one (Frank pretended that he "didn't think we'd buy one today..."). So, we loaded up the 46-inch sony something or other -- it was a tight squeeze to get it in the back of the Pilot (Frank offered to leave the kids at the mart if he could get the tv in...) We made it fit and then drove home. Frank drove more cautiously than I have ever seen him drive before -- he likened it to driving home from the hospital with you first child.... really? It was cute to see him so excited -- he spent the day setting up the tv, which involved altering (i.e. "sawing apart" the built in cabinet in our family room -- it was touch and go for a while, but it's all good now. We stayed up all night watching stuff in HD (ok, not really - but we did spend a couple of hours finding all of the cool features -- found some "scene it" type trivia games, so we played those - weird, but fun...)
More later - gotta go watch TV! :)

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Gearing up for "Princess Camp"

Just kind of a "normal" weekend here -- running errands, and plugging away at the endless list of projects around the house. There was (another) huge thunderstorm all night last night, and that kept us all up at different points - so we are all a little sleepy today, but...

Ellie starts "Princess Camp" on Monday -- it's just this week, Mon - Fri from like 9:30 - 12:00 each day. She is so excited! It's at a little dance studio here - Frank found it a few months ago when ellie was really hopped up on taking "ballerina clases" -- so, he foun this and signed her up. The flyer boasts activities like, "dress-up," "tea parties," "painting nalis" and of course, "dancing." Cute enough. So, last week, ellie keeps saying how she has to wear her tu-tu (her HALLOWEEN costume from last year) so that she looks like a ballerina. Of course, I don't want her look like a goof-ball, so I called the studio just to see if she should wear anything specific or bring anything with her. And, wouldn't you know. . . no tu-tu, but . . . she "should wear a leotard and tights (??) and she should bring both ballet shoes and (get this) tap shoes." Whoa! These people are serious about dance! I was seriously just going to send her in gym shoes and a nice sundress - glad I called, I guess. So, today, we went to a "dance supply store" (because where the hell else am I going to buy tap shoes??) and got the shoes. It actually wasn't too pricey, which was good -- I started to hyperventilate a little bit thinking about what an expensinve "tea-party" this could turn into, but ellie was thrilled and wore her "tap shoes" all day (I kept trying to get her to "tap" on the carpeting, but she was wise to that! No such luck...)

Otherwise, we spent the day cleaning - mostly bathrooms and those darn kitchen cabinets, still!
What a thankless job that is. I mean, the cabinets are so disgusting - even after they are "clean," they still are not "like new" -- lots of scratches and imperfections that you can't clean off. I don't think they look that bad from a distance, but they are not good up close, that's for sure!

Full update on Monday after the "princess" gets home from "camp." :)

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Our anniversary

Nine years! Can't believe it -- who knew I had married a "man of steel" that would carry me off into the sunset of Omaha?? Well, here we are - only two weeks in town, so there are no babysitters on our radar yet. The whole family is planning to go swimming at "the club" tonight. Ellie is so excited - we have not been over there to swim yet (the weather has always been iffy whenever we think about going...). The kids are going to eat early (cheese pizza - everyone's favorite!) and then we will swim right after Frank gets home. After the kids go to bed, Frank and I will probably do something "take-out" style -- doesn't sound too exciting, but the proposition of eating by ourselves without being interrupted or having to get up a thousand times during dinner and not having to scarf it down to "keep up" with the midgets -- almost worth it to not eat until 8:30 or so!

"When I get to Omaha" Goal #1 - I have done it... I made a pie. I joked before we came here that I would become some sort of domestic pie-making person (because I would have so much time on my hands...). Well, after coming home from the grocery store with three different types of pre-made pie crusts (already - the undomestic side from chicago is coming out), Ellie and I made a fresh strawberry pie (her choice). It looks yummy, but we'll see how it tastes. Baby steps -- when the ready made pie crusts are gone, maybe I will venture into making them from scratch - just trying to pace myself... :)

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

The fourth of July - Omaha Style

We spent our first major holiday in Omaha - the fourth of July. The Hilts made the journey west to spend a few days with us over the fourth. It was so fun I wish they could have stayed forever! We were debating whether or not to go see an organized fireworks display, but we decided against it as it doesn't get dark here until around 10 pm and we knew the kids would have a hard time lasting that long. As it turns out, we were able to get our fireworks fix right here at our own house. At the first sign of "dusk" the entire subdivision (and I can only imagine the whole city of omaha) erupted in amateur fireworks. I wasn't sure if it was the fourth or if our neighborhood was under attack -- from every direction and as far as the eye could see -- fireworks. We truly are in the "heartland of America" here. It was kind of cool, as long as you didn't think about the fact that it was probably fairly dangerous - a bunch of drunk people with explosives. Hmph.

the whole weekend was very fun - it was fun to be tourists in our own town (partly because we don't know or claim this town yet...). We hit the zoo, the botanical garden, the parks, and still had time to hang out here, too. the perfect balance of sightseeing and hanging out. I can't believe that they drove all the way from chicago to see us (and omaha, of course...) -- we really appreciated the visitors and I think a good time was had by all.

This is our first "normal" week in Omaha - Frank goes to work M - F (no out of town nights) and me and the kids are just kickin' around here. Ahhh. . . summer.