Omaha Vacation

Why hello! Yes we are still alive and well. :P

I am not sure if I am really returning to blog land but here is a random little blog for you.

We are not going to be taking a big vacation this year, so instead we decided to do some fun little things as a family. Shawn was able to take Friday off of work, so Thursday we got a hotel room in Omaha so the boys could swim and Friday we headed to the zoo!

Our boys have really bonded lately and  we have had some very fun "brother moments".

This was right before we left on Thursday and I believe this is how the conversation went:

K: Winken you want to hab a conversation?

L: yeah!

 So they move these chairs together and Kallen proceeds to tell Lincoln all about his toy helicopter

Then I hear:

K: Winken you want to hab wap time?

L:Yeah!

And Lincoln proceeds to back his chubbly little self onto Kallen's lap where they hang out for a few minutes.

We have had tons of these moments lately and it just makes me smile! We got to our hotel around 8:30pm that night and, against my better judgement, we let them stay up late to take a quick swim.

We got them back into our room and into pj's around 10pm and they were out almost instantly!

It made me smile to see them sleeping next to each other and they did awesome all night!

A late night equaled the next morning in our hotel room looking like this....

...feeding Lincoln in one bed to keep him quiet, while Kallen was passed out in the other bed. :)

We knew the boys were too young for a whole day at the zoo so we took our time in the morning:

-reading the Bible

-swimming and relaxing in the hot tub

- being super cute

- and getting ready for the day! It was the perfect family morning!

On our way to the zoo Kallen piped up from the backseat: "Where is Home Depot?" "I don't know Kallen." "I just want to go to the zoo after Home Depot!" (seriously!?)

We made our way to the zoo around noon and between our DesMoines zoo membership and a coupon we got in super cheap! We accidentally forgot our stroller so we headed over to rent a stinkin $12 stroller and the guy was on break so a worker gave us our stroller for free!!

The boys had a BLAST at the zoo and aside from the occasional, I haven't had a nap and it's 103 degrees meltdown, they did really well!

Kallen touching a starfish:

"Mommy wook it's a orange fish! My fabowite cowor! Take my picture with the orange fish mommy!!"

A quick stop at the playground to burn off some energy:

Watching our kiddos play:

 (yes I went to the zoo naked- wouldn't you on such a hot day!? heehee)

Seriously the biggest snake I have ever seen!!!!

By the end of the day Lincoln was so tired he sat with this cracker hanging out of his mouth for like 15min. It was ridiculous!

Checking out the polar bear:

And around 4:15 Lincoln gave up the fight:

We really had no intention of making  it through the entire zoo, but with only skipping a few things we made through the whole thing in about 4 1/2  hours. We were on the boys schedule the entire time and for the most part we just went wherever they wanted to go. The zoo was so good about having water stations everywhere and the only money we spent was $6 on some caffiene for the parents and $4 on a Shark book for the boys!

It was the perfect little mini-vacation and I was so sad to see the day come to an end.

Our goal was to keep things cheap and with a $60 hotel room found on hotwire.com that came with a huge continental breakfast, our entire weekend was under $100!

I am hoping we can do a couple more fun little weekends like this before the year is over.

I just LOVE spending long weekends with my little family- now if we could just both quit work and vacation all the time......:P