A day of TOO much fun??

We were home the first weekend of October, and next weekend Frank is working "inventory" at the plant on Saturday and then we are off to Hawaii on Saturday night, so... that leaves us with THIS weekend to explore all that Omaha has to offer in terms of Halloween fun. Here is the fun-filled adventure for today --

Saturday morning: Vala's Pumpkin Patch; Gretna, NE

OK, we had heard that this was a "must see" -- people described it to us as "very commercialized" but "well run" and "constantly being improved," so of course, we decided to give it a go. Pricey, by Omaha standards (about $12 per person - kids and adults...Nathan was still free - whew!), but once you get in the doors, most stuff is included with the admission and the place is HUGE. We were there for almost three hours and judging by the map, I think we saw about a half to 2/3 of the whole place. Very cute stuff -- lots of familiar favorites from home -- the "How tall this fall?," lots of animals to feed by hand, lots of photo-ops where the kids could put their faces in the "holes." There were also a lot of free "shows" -- the pig-tucky derby races (groups of pigs running around in a circle), the pumpkin canon shooter thing (even cooler than it sounds), lots of robotic sort of entertainment (not dissimilar to the country bear jamboree at disney world only more halloween themed - skeletons and stuff like that) -- the kids loved these shows - music for nathan and ellie was just singing along and clapping at the end of each song. There were haystack rides and corn mazes and lots of cutesy little fall displays (storybook village, pirate themed "playgrounds") to walk around. After a few hours, we had had enough (mostly Nathan, who kept asking for "mommy's car car? go home?") On the way out we each chose our treat for later: Ellie and Nathan chose cotton candy (surprise, surprise after the cotton candy meltdown at Sonny Acres last weekend... and incidentally, Nathan chose a roll of smarties after lunch instead of the cotton candy...), Frank chose handmade fudge (very yummy - reminded me of Mackinaw Island Fudge) and I went with (shocker) the homemade cheese popcorn (also very yummy - reminded me of Garrett's popcorn in chicago -- it was a very samll bag, but it's just about gone already -- no shame in my cheese-corn game!)

Saturday afternoon: Children's Museum Halloween Exhibit -- Cobweb Castle

Since we have a membership to the Omaha Children't museum (and I think we've been enough times already to more than pay for itself...the kids love it there!), we decided we could jet "all the way downtown" for an hour or so to see their Halloween exhibit: the Cobweb Castle. The museum closes at 5:00, and we got there around 3:30 -- it was more than enough time. On another fortunate note, there was a Nebraska football game in progress, so we literally had the place to ourselves...worked out pretty well. The cobweb castle itself was more or less just a (dark) room with mazes, "stick your hand in the hole and pull out something creepy," and lots of tunnels and black lights and all sorts of "scary" things for little kids. It was cute, but we were literally in that part of the museum for about 10 - 15 minutes. But, the kids didn't waste any time making their way to their long standing favorites... the dinosaurs, the "ball room" (they call it the science center, I think), the giant piano, the craft room. Still, all in all, we were there for a little over an hour and we (frank and I) had had plenty of children's museum fun. And, of course, we were glad to satisfy the curiosity of the cobweb castle before we ran out of weekends before Halloween!

Saturday evening: Dinner at the Old Market

Since we were already "all the way downtown," and we were done at the museum by 5:00, we decided that it might be a good night for a family night out on the town, so we went to eat at a pizza place (I know, risky in Omaha) called Old Chicago. It's a chain down here (they must have them somewhere else, but who knows) and we figured with a name like Old CHICAGO, it must be good. And you know what? It really was one of the best pizzas we've had here -- pleasantly surprised by an Omaha pizza for once. We have a couple of leads on some other places, too (from the girl that cut my hair - consider the source) so our search will continue for the best pizza in town, but so far - Old Chicago has the lead.

We piled all the fun stuff onto today - tomorrow, it's supposed to rain here, so we will likely spend the day doing errands and oh, yes... frank continues to paint the trim upstairs -- only two rooms left!