spring break - take two

Sorry to keep you waiting so long for the rest of our break pictures.  I know you guys are all dying to know what we did.  No worries.  You can rest easy now.  Here it is:

Wednesday after lunch, we packed the kiddos in the car and headed over to Omaha.  Yes, you heard me - O.MA.HA.  Jealous?  And you thought Cancun was the place to go.  Ha.

The kids were so excited...  Can't you tell?

But their excitement did peak when we got to our hotel and found the SWIMMING POOL!!!

The girls had fun jumping into Daddy's arms and splashing around with their floaties on.

And Tate suddenly decided that he didn't like swimming after all, which was a shock since he LOVED being in our pool last summer and he loves to splash around in the bathtub.  But oh well, we sat along the side of the pool and smelled the flowers.  Literally.

And we made the girls laugh with our silly goggle-faces.

And melted mommy's heart with adorable kissy-faces.

After a good swim, we headed out to dinner at Cracker Barrel and frosties at Wendy's and then back to the hotel where we slept hard.

We woke up in the morning and ate breakfast at the hotel's cafe area, complete with a waterfall and forest mural.

 I wish I would've taken more pics of the inside of the hotel.  Let's just say it's a good thing for websites like kayak.com, because we never would've been able to stay at this place without it.  It was purdy fancy for this Iowa girl.

With full tummies, we headed out to the Omaha Zoo!  I hadn't been there since I was about Addie's age, and everyone was telling us that it's one of the best zoos in the country.  And we weren't let down!

Well, maybe Tate was a little...

 This is the closest they'd let us get to the lions.  Fortunately.

The Desert Dome was pretty cool.

The ginormous lazy warthogs inside were definitely my fave desert creatures.

Down at the Cat Complex, the girls enjoyed the big tigers.

But I didn't like how the jaguar was eyeing my son.  Not kidding.  He definitely wanted to eat Tate.  And everyone around us was noticing it too.  We tested the thought by moving Tate to the other end of the cage and the jaguar followed right along.  Like he was "circling" his prey and getting ready to pounce.  He didn't take his eyes off of him the whole time we were there.  

 I was extremely grateful for the 9' tall fence between us.

My absolute fave is coming up...

 Can you guess what it is?

 Yes, the gorillas!  Seriously.  They are so fascinating to me.  I loved the one above who was obviously pouting about something.  He sat like that the whole time.  Do you think maybe he's trying to ignore the idiot behind him making gorilla faces?

 I could sit and watch these guys for hours.

 But since I couldn't, I just took a bunch of pictures instead.

Here are my two favorite gorillas.

We splurged on lunch since we got into the zoo for free (yes, I forgot to mention we met a family in the pool who had 4 extra tickets and since Tate was free, we didn't have to pay anything!) and got hotdogs and popcorn.  I know, not much... but for what we had to pay for it, we might as well have eaten at a normal restaurant with real food.

 After a good lunch, Tate took his nap.

 Looks real comfy, huh?  I swear we tried to adjust him, but he kept coming back to this same horrible position.

Addie took over as our leader and used her map skills to guide us around for the rest of the afternoon.

 She successfully led us to the Aquarium where we saw these guys:

 But the coolest part was the Shark Reef Tunnel.

You'd better hold on for dear life!

Everywhere we looked, above our heads and side to side, we saw...

BIG, SCARY SHARKS!!!

YOWZERS!

I think this big fish was putting on a show just for us.

After we dried ourselves off, I took the girls into the Butterfly house while the guys hung out outside.

Then we HAD to go see the giraffes.  Millie had been talking about them all day.  We were nervous at first when we saw they weren't outside yet, but we tracked them down.

And lastly, we made our way through the big indoor rainforest where we swang with the monkeys from tree branches.  (My computer is telling me "swang" isn't a word.  So, what do you say?  Swung?  Swinged? Does it really matter?)

And ended our day with another happier picture by the lions.

By the time we got home Thursday night, we were BEAT.  Really beat.  So we took it easy and just kinda hung out around home on Friday.  And on Saturday, Chad took the kids out in the woods for a hike while I painted the kids' bathroom.  The kids had a blast with Daddy, like always.  But unfortunately, the camera battery died after just this picture.  Hmmm... I wonder why?  It's not like we were picture crazy at the zoo or anything...  

Ha.

You'll have to wait for pics of the bathroom.  My friend, Abby, is coming over tomorrow to paint some cute stuff in it, so you'll be sure to see the pics soon.

Also, Addie has some exciting news she wants to share (and no, she's not having another baby brother or sister) that we'll be posting soon too.

So stay tuned!