1st Day of School 2007

We cannot belive that CP is in 3rd grade and GP is in 1st! It still seems like we just moved here and GP should be in preschool.

Waiting for the bus. Hard to imagine that we will have frost in a month.

This year we have a new bus with tinted windows and A/C.

First Day of School Storm

Today was the boys' first day of school. I thought I would be clever and beat them home and greet them at the bus stop - nope. They got out an hour early and JP picked them up. I came home to a houseful of boys all jumping up & down playing Dreamcast.

Everything went very well at school. The boys both like their teachers and everyone is glad to be back in a routine. JP enjoyed her first free day in the last eight years. Finally!

We had a beautiful storm tonight, complete with a wall cloud, blinding lightning, and a big green rain shaft. There were a couple tornadoes reported north of Lincoln, but all we got was a little less than an inch of rain and some freaky looking clouds. The panorama picture does not do justice to the enormity of the wall cloud. The picture spans 180° and was shot with a wide angle lens and still did not cover the top of the wall. I think if you click on it you will be able to see a larger version of it.

Watchin' Laundry

I found this shot on JP's camera along with a matching video of the boys watching the washing machine in operation. GP said that CP started watching it, and then he got too distracted and started watching it by accident.

I am so glad that we bought a big TV. I need to remember this the next time I think about buying an XBox-360.

Saltdogs

Last night was the last of three Exmark sponsored games with the Lincoln Saltdogs. We missed the first two, but made sure that we hit this one. The boys enjoyed the night and stayed engaged in the game. We had popcorn, pop, beer, cotton candy, and a lot of fun. We beat the St. Joe Blacksnakes, 5-2. GP predeicted that we would becuase the 'Snakes "ssssssss-stink."

Events like this one are what make Lincoln so special. We left the house at 6:15, stopped to get $$, parked, got popcorn, and made it to our seats before the game started @ 7:00. The stadium is beatuiful and all the seats are great. CP caught a shirt during the 7th inning stretch give-away. We stayed for the entire game and didn't have to think about leaving and getting out before traffic got bad. The boys ran the bases (with 3,000 other kids) after the game and really felt like they were part of the whole experience. It took about 1/2 hour to get from the stadium to our house, and maybe all of 10 minutes after that before we were all asleep.

The Grammas' Visit

Last time we went to the beach (Wagontrain reservoir) the boys hooked up with some other boys that had an inflatable boat. This last week, JP hit SuperTarget and bought the "Club 300" inflatable boat. It's like a cardboard box: it can be used for so many things. Here it's being used as a popcorn containment device in the living room. We took it to the beach yesterday and they played non-stop for 3 hours with it.

The Grammas stopped here on their way to and from OK City. Since we're in the middle of nowhere, Lincoln is the 1/2-way point to everywhere. We watched Daisy the dog for a week and will miss her. When she arrived she didn't know what to do or think. After a week with the kids & Maggie, she knew the routine: bark at anything outside, chase the kids, give sad eyes to anyone eating anything, etc. I think she lost 3 or 4 pounds during her visit without Great-Gramma giving her snacks all day long.

JP & Nana took advantage of some shade and a breeze and installed JP's new plants in the back yard. Last weekend we dug out a new flowerbed. I thought it would take all day, but with the heat and constant watering, the grass roots had withered, and the sod peeled up in one giant chunk. JP put in some Speedwells and a Korean Spice bush, and moved around the hostas that were there. We have the area by the trash can to do, and then the perimeter of the house should be complete (except, of course, for the patio/deck/pergola/???).

Nebraska Weeds

This is the intersection of 40th St. and Yankee Hill road on the south side of Lincoln.
To the west, Yankee Hill is a wide divided 4-lane stretch of concrete, streetlights, and a bikepath. To the east it's two rough lanes of gravel, washboard, and dust.
The new SuperTarget sits on the NW corner. The Yankee Hill country club golf course takes up the NE corner. There's a bean field on the SW corner, and a marijuana field on the SE corner where this picture was taken from. I had to hold my camera up on a tripod to get above the tops of the plants.
Hemp was grown here before and during WWII. Now it grows wild everywhere. I never noticed it until I was talking about dove hunting with the guys at work. The best place for dove hunting is in marijuana fields; the birds love eating the seeds. Once I learned what the plants looked like, I couldn't believe how much "ditchweed" there is growing everywhere. It's inert, and its only value is as a habitat for doves.
One of the guys at work had some urban-looking folks from Omaha knock on his door and ask if they could chop down and take some ditchweed growing in his pasture. I guess it is used to fill in and dilute drug-grade dope. I just wonder how much is harvested and sold as pot.
I get a chuckle every time I drive through this intersection - on one side we have SuperTarget, super roads, and the growth they represent, on the other side is wild Nebraska at its best.

GP's new bike

GP has outgrown his little blue bike and upgraded to a new big-boy Schwinn.

Ak-Sar-Ben Aquarium

We had nothing to do last Sunday and it felt like we had wasted away the weekend, so we loaded up the minivan and went on a road trip to Ak-Ben-Sar aquarium. It's 45 minutes away on the Platte River. Originally it was a hatching station, now it's a state park with some very nice fish tanks full of native fish. We saw for our first time what a real paddlefish looks like - wierd. We also saw the largest catfish in captivity - I think it is over 90 lbs.

The geese are actually agressive when it comes to hand feeding. The carp are big and hungry; I would bet that they would eat out of your hand here. Too bad you can't fish in these ponds... I have always wanted to hook up with a carp on some light fly tackle.

There are some old fish ponds that fill a dammed-up ravine. The lowest one holds koi, the next one is nothing but bright green algae. The one up from that is full of shrubs - the dam won't hold water. The top-most pool is crystal clear and full of trout. It's a shame that the state cannot get their act together and repair this place. The dams need repair, the trails are overgrown, and everything feels very neglected. It's almost like the state built all its parks 50-100 yers ago and then left them to decay.

CP is digging through his wallet for quarters for fish food. The boys had fun feeding the fish, but on the way home they realized that the smell of fish food was not going to go away. Low blood sugar, high humidity, and smelly hands made for some entertaining whining and complaining.

The Tony Flies

CP's Kawasaki Tony finally took flight. We built this one from scratch. CP found a side-view picture of it on the internet and I sketched up some plans and tried my best to make it real. I should have used CAD, but my hand sketches worked well enough that we now have another WW-II flier in our backyard airforce. After I completed the airframe, we went to hobbytown to get some dope and CP found that this month's fancy modeler magazine's featured plane was the Tony. It's centerfold was big 3-view drawings of the plane that I could have used. Oh well.

Friday PM Zoo

I have taken advantage of one of our nicer benefits at work lately: Summer Hours. If I put in extra hours M-Th, then I can take off Friday afternoons. Putting in the extra hours isn't the problem - trying to get everything wrapped up to be able to leave early is. So far I have been able to get out early twice, and we have hit the zoo both times.

Zoo mac & cheese is one of those magical dishes that cannot be passed up.

I was able to leave work at 11:00, which got me home at 11:35 and back on the road to the zoo by 11:45. There was a baseball game, concert, and city fireworks display at the ballpark that shares the zoo parking lot, so we had to park a mile away and run to make our 1:00 IMAX movie. The movie was "Dinosaurs 3D!" and was pretty much a like a Discovery Channel show, but with some 3D dinos jumping around. The movie had maybe 3 or 4 minutes of film that was actually shot with an IMAX camera. The rest of the movie was old crappy film that had been blown up to 60' high or computer generated stuff that looks better on a home TV.

It's fascinating looking at birds after endlessly studying dinosaurs with the kids. This one's feathers are more hair than feathers, and it has a huge claw on one of its toes.

Yardwork

JP got the bug to rip up more sod and exchange grass for other plants. The south side of the house is now landscaped with some grasses and the plum bush that used to be up front.

We are still trying to figure out what to do with the back patio. The current concrete patio is just too small to do anything with, and the back door is a pain to enter and exit. We were originally going to build a deck, but after looking at everyone else's, we started to worry about maintenance. We really enjoyed our paver patio in Woodstock, so we're currently looking down that path. This rough photoshop hack shows what the brick patio and pergola might look like. Whatever we decide to do, we need to get going with it.

Brain Move

MB, Dr. SCB, & Maddie stopped here with Gramma & Grampa on their way from Berkely, CA to Starkville, MS. Uncle Brain will be teaching at Mississippi State this fall in the History department. We wish him the best of luck in his new career.

Maddie was the center of attention. She is inches away from walking. It was different having a baby in the house again. We forgot how they get into everything. Our old house was baby-proof and had locks on avery cabinet door, gates at the top & bottom of the stairs, etc. This house is definitely not baby-proof; Maddie was into every cabinet & drawer. It was fun watching her explore.

Wild Hamster

Our neighbor found a wild hamster in his window well. Turns out that the hamster was tame and hungry. The boys fed her some carrots and JP took her to the humane society. Katrina was interested a little, but JP kept her away. We asked around and found that one of our neighbors had released the rodent into the wild after growing tired of it hanging out behind his washing machine.

July 4th

I have to say that Lincoln's firworks policy kicks butt. Fireworks go on sale a few days before and we can burn black powder all day on the 3rd & 4th. Lincoln proper does not sell anything that goes bang, but the neighboring towns do, and they are only a few minutes away.

The Hickman Kiwanis foreworks tent was running a special on pyrotechnic tanks. We grabbed a few dozen and built a couple tank divisions. CP had fun, but was sad to see all the tanks be destroyed. For some reason JP did not want a bunch of soot covered sulphurous burned-out tanks left in the garage.

We lit off fireworks on and off all day on the 4th and started for real at about 8:00 pm. By 10 pm I realized that we had too many fireworks (can that be a real problem?!?) and were not going to be able to burn them all. I kicked up the pace and frantically lit up as much as I could as quickly as possible. It made for a good show until a big mortar shell blew up 5 feet off the ground and sent GP in the house.

Oklahoma

One of the highlights of our trip to Oklahoma was a visit to Tinker AFB and the static display of planes there. RK's father in law flew B-52's in 'Nam and told us all about his career and B-52's. He actually flew this one (and every other one that was made!).

We saw an Air Force A-7, a Normandy C-47, B-47, F-4, B-29, B-52, F-105, and a B-1.

I wish I had taken some pictures of the rain & flooding we experienced on our trip. Oklahoma City had 18 straight days of rain and received over 10 inches in the month of June. Their normal rainfall for January-June is only 13". The entire area was green like a jungle and completely overgrown from all the moisture. We were in Edmund where the land is hilly (and RED) so there was not much flooding. Each storm that passed filled the creeks to the top and drained away within hours. The low country suffered as the rivers jumped out of their banks and flooded the floodplains.
The storms we experienced were part of a low pressure system that would not move out of the area. It looked like a hurricane on the radar - just continuous bands of thunderstorms spinning around a non-moving center. It rained the entire time we were in Oklahoma. We were glad to see blue skies when we got home to Nebraska.

Lt. Col. RK

Last weekend we headed down to Sooner country with the Grammas for JP's brother's promotion to Lt. Col.

The boys hit it off with their cousins and had a great time playing everywhere we went. CP slept past 8:00 am one day from paying so hard the day before.

RK has been in the USAF for a long time and is closing in on retirement. I remember when we were in school and he was in ROTC.