Scary Music

Last night, Briana got to perform with the Millard Orchestra at Vala's Pumpkin Patch for their annual Scary Music Night.  She did a great job, as always.

Briana with her friends Katie and Addison just before the show.

(The girl sitting behind them looks super happy!)

Here they are during the show.

(girl sitting behind them still a bit if-y :)

After the show, the girls were free to spend the rest of the evening seeing the sights at Vala's.  In the dark.  Trying to keep up with Briana, her three friends (we picked up another friend along the way), and Sydney was enough to drive me to drink.  But, alas, we didn't lose anyone and the girls had a blast together. 

Sydney even managed to have a good time, despite being without a friend of her own. 

In related falltime news, I went outside today to discover that fall has officially arrived on Elm Street.

Isn't it pretty!







Winner, Winner!

Look who's going to be a Husky Community Builder (also known as student council) this year!!!!

Vote for Sydney!

This year, Sydney is running for student council!!  She has been busily making her poster and preparing her speech.  That's right.  She has to give a speech in front of  her whole class.  She's not nervous about it though.  Why would she be?  She talks in front of the class all the time!  She told me so. 

 

Here is a copy of her speech.  I'm hoping it's ok with her that I'm sharing it on here.  It's really pretty awesome.

 

It says:  If you vote for me, I will watch for bullies.  I will think of a way to stop them.  I want to help Harvey Oaks be a great school.  I will work really hard on this to make it a great year!

 

In other, much less exciting news, I met Rainbow Rowell today!  Shannon and I went to one of her readings in the Old Market.  We were sitting in our chairs waiting for it to start and Rainbow came and sat down right next to me and introduced herself!!!  She said she was happy to see that I had a copy of her new book that's only available in the UK.  Yay!!  So we chatted about it for a few minutes and I gushed about how awesome the book is.  Then she did her reading, which was awesome and funny.  Then she signed my book and took a picture with me! 

 

 



First Day Of School

We survived the first week of school!  Yay!  The girls both had very good weeks and were soo excited to be back in school. 

Yellowstone!

Last week, we went to Yellowstone!  We took two days to get there, stopping at a few places along the way.  Our first stop was at Chimney Rock in Nebraska. 



Then we headed further west into Wyoming.  We saw Devil's Tower (there's kind of a cute story that goes along with Devil's Tower, google it!).



Guess what happened to me at Devil's Tower?  I set my brand new camera on the hood of the car to take a self portrait, and the wind blew it right off of the hood and onto the hot, hard ground.  My brand new camera no longer works at all :(

See all those bikes in the behind the girls?  There were tons of bikers everywhere!  Maybe they were headed to Sturgis?  We're not sure, but there were tons of bikes even in Yellowstone. 

Anyway, we stopped for lunch in Cody, WY and then kept on truckin right up to Yellowstone. 

We made it!!  Finally!  Excitement levels were pretty high at this point. 

We spent the next four days in Yellowstone, trying to see as much of it as possible (although according to a youtube video that I watched, you cannot see all of yellowstone in your lifetime.  Wow, it's a lot like the Louvre in Paris!!). 

We saw tons of waterfalls, buffalo and elk.  We saw guysers, hot springs and mountains.  The mountains are everywhere!  Why do we not have mountains in Omaha?  They are soo pretty!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Old Faithful!

 

This is a really cool hotel in Yellowstone.  It looks like a tree house.  Very cool!

Girls playing in snow on the top of a mountain.

Happy Birthday to Mike!!

Elk

Then there was a super fun hike called Uncle Tom's Trail.  Mike really wanted to go on this hike, where you hike down a huge incline, then go down a million rickety metal steps, and at the bottom is this amazing waterfall.  The kids opted to stay in the car for this one, but since it was Mike's birthday, I said I would go with him.  As we are hiking down this steep incline, we keep seeing signs that say things like "Change in altitude.  Take breaks from hiking often!  Stay hydrated!"  Of course, I am in flip flops, and I left my Dr. Pepper in the car.  But I trudged on, getting more nervous by the minute.  The hike down was fine.  No problems there.  The waterfall was so pretty, and we even saw a rainbow!

 

Then we had to go back up.  Not fun.  I had gone about 30 steps up before I was affected by the altitude.  I say this because Mike thought I was just being a baby and was tired.  But I swear, it was the altitude!  I had to take breaks all the time.  I just couldn't catch my breath.  I even thought I was going to faint at one point.  And I told Mike.  But he just rolled his eyes and hiked on up without me.  I got to the top without fainting or dying, luckily.  Then I wandered around the parking lot for about ten minutes because I couldn't remember where we parked.  I was a real mess.  Mike finally found me and even brought me a bottle of water.  It still took most of the day for me to recover. 

Our last day, we went and saw the Grand Teton Mountains.  Very pretty! 

 

We had a picnic on the lake, and then the girls got their swimsuits on and played in the water.  It was the perfect way to end the vacation. 

We got back home on Sunday, and now we are in full back to school mode!  Pictures of that to come on Wednesday!!

CWS Fan Fair

Since the Olympic Swimming Trials are being held in Omaha next week, they put up this really cool swimming guy right off of Dodge Street.  He's huge!  And probably a really fast swimmer. 

Today was Father's Day (Happy Father's Day, Dad & Mike!!), so after we stopped at the swimming guy, we went down to the fan fair at the College World Series. Nothing like sweating buckets on your special day! It was fun, despite the heat.

 Briana won those awesome sunglasses she's wearing.  She's hot stuff.

 And, check out those tattoos! 

We got to play lots of games and we got lots of free stuff.  We even got free cokes and free powerades!  Perfect for a sweltering day.  But, Mike had a good time, so I think it was a successful father's day. 

Summer Library & A Birthday Party

Briana got her first job!  She's going to be volunteering at the library this summer in the childrens department.  She had her first day last week, and she had a blast.  Of course, I wasn't allowed to stay at the library while she was volunteering.  In fact, she wouldn't even let me walk her in!

She had a very fun time with it, and she's ready to go back next week!  Yay!!
And, we had her 10th birthday party!  A fun time was had by all, as usual.

She opened lots and lots of presents (and refused to give me a normal smile in any of these pictures!).

My favorite part of the party was definitely the cake.  Briana wanted a tye dye cake, and it turned out really cute.

And, to top off the night, the girls' cousins got to sleep over.  It was pretty much the best way to end the party.

They had a blast and stayed up very, very late. 

Smiles all around!  Happy 10th Birthday, Briana!!