Nebraska Vacation Day 1

This year we took our first ever family vacation (or "trip" as we more accurately call it) to a destination other than visiting grandparents.  In order to break ourselves in slowly, we tagged along with the Orchard Hill West group to E.T. Mahoney State Park just west of Omaha, Nebraska.  Every two years our church plans a family camping trip complete with full meals served out of a chuck wagon, planned kids' activities, small group sharing time and entertainment.  I don't camp (for many reasons I will not go into here), but there was a really nice lodge with air-conditioned hotel suite rooms.  We enjoyed a two-story room with the beds in a loft room upstairs.  It was great to be able to go back to the room after lunch, cool down, nap for 2 hours and then go back out for the rest of the day!  This year about 40 families with a total of 150 people went along.

Nebraska doesn't sound like a very exciting vacation destination, but there are lots of things to do in the Omaha area, and since the kids have never been outside of Iowa, any place new is exciting!  We arrived in Omaha around noon and made a stop at the Durham Museum housed in the historic Omaha Union Station.  There was a lot of stuff about the history of Omaha that the kids pretty much just ran through the exhibits.  The big draw was the trains.  They had some refurbished coach cars circa 1948 that you could walk through.  It was very interesting and one of the things Emily named as her favorite part of the trip.

There was also a huge model train display.  This would definitely be Lincoln's favorite part of the whole trip.  He literally ran back and forth between the windows for over an hour watching the trains go around and pushing different buttons.  He has talked about going to the train museum every day since.

The special temporary exhibit was called Mindbender Mansion.  It featured all kinds of games and puzzles to solve like moving a certain number of toothpicks to change the shape of the design or arranging smaller shapes to make a larger shape.  Austin & Emily worked to solve several of the puzzles while Lincoln & watched the trains.  It would be an awesome activity for kids age 8+.





We arrived at the state park a couple days later than the rest of the group due to the availability of the lodge rooms, but we jumped right in.  The kids at the camp had decided to put on a parade before supper.  Some moms had made a Wal-mart run along with lots of random things people had in their campers.  There were hats and capes and streamers and playing cards clicking on bike wheels.  Emily ended up with a butterfly mask, a lei and a pinwheel.  Lincoln had his lawn chair, a lei and shared a hula hoop.  Over 50 kids marched/rode around the campground led by a couple on motorcycles.  What a fun sight!

My funny picture of the day is Lincoln sitting with his lawn chair strapped to his back.  After discovering he could wear it as a backpack, he refused to sit in it because he just wanted to wear it.  He sat like this for over an hour!