Visiting Omaha

I have so, so much to say about our super  fun vacation to Omaha earlier this week but first off I have a few pictures from my birthday that I want to share. Jake and Naomi made me a cake. 

 Leah is now enjoying herself some scrambled eggs sometimes in the morning. She's a big fan.

 I was trying to get a picture of her two bottom teeth. You can't really see them but I thought this picture turned out pretty good anyway.

 ...And is what a call a party in Naomi's crib. 

Ok, now on to the vacation shots. We arrived in Omaha on Monday afternoon and went straight to the zoo to meet my sister, Chrissie, who came to spend the day with us. It was pouring down rain but Naomi was so excited we didn't have the heart to put it off. So we just grabbed her an umbrella from the gift shop and powered through. In the end we were thankful for the rain for two reasons. 1) We practically had the zoo to ourselves and 2) the weather made the big cats restless. It was awesome to see them all up and pacing, not sleeping like they were on the other days. That tiger in the picture below walked right up to the window we were looking through and stepped onto the ledge. It was unbelievable!

 After a few hours at the zoo, Naomi was beat. She was asleep before we even left the parking lot. After we changed into some dry clothes we hit up an amazing Chineese buffet. And then went swimming at the hotel.

 Tuesday the windchill was in the 20s. We only got to spend a little time at the zoo. We caught a couple of short Imax films, saw the giraffes and gorillas, and called it a morning.

 That afternoon we went to The Pizza Machine with my sister, Becky, who drove down to meet us for the afternoon. They had a great buffet that had tons of dessert options. I couldn't decided between the dessert pizza, ice cream, or slushies so I had them all. That's my kind of place. Then we took advantage of their play area. I wish you all could have seen this miniature bowling set up. I can't believe more places don't have this.

On the way back to the hotel we stopped in at Cabelas for some shooting practice. I'm not sure but I think we had more fun at this then Naomi. Each target in the little scene made different motions when you hit it. We got a kick out of seeing what each one did.

 Wednesday the weather was finally nice so we set out to see all the places in the zoo that were outside. It was a long fun day. Naomi's favorite was the goats. How funny is that?! All kinds of exotic animals she has never even seen and she just can't wait to get back to the goat pen (in her defense the goats were the only thing you could actually touch). This was also the day we figured out how thankful we were for the bad weather earlier in the week. There were people everywhere. After spending the day fighting through large groups of 6 year olds, the rain was looking a lot more like a blessing.

By Wednesday evening we had really done all that we had set out to do. Since all the fun kids activites close early and it was raining AGAIN we headed out to the mall. Somehow, Naomi seemed to think this was the best part of the trip. We just stood around taking turns riding up and down the escalator with her. It was a two year old's dream come true.

Thursday morning we packed up all the gear and made a short stop at the zoo before hitting the road home. The "end of vacation feeling" is not one of my favorites. Lucky for me I brought back two of the cutest little things in the zoo.