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Our last morning in Omaha, our plan was to check out the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian bridge, which connects Omaha, Nebraska and Council Bluffs, Iowa. I told Ellie when we got out of the van that we were going to walk to Iowa…I think she thought we were going to walk all the way home. She just said “but that will take forever.” It was a warm day…and by the end I think she thought we had walked all the way home…instead of the just over a half mile that we did.

I’ve always said my children are better behaved when separated. I think i found the solution. Perhaps having them in different states is the way to go!

On the Nebraska side of this lovely bridge, is this great fountain that Ellie just adored. She had the best time trying to catch the water as it came out of the sprinklers…she’d run from spout to spout trying to figure out where it would come out next and ultimately miss it every time.

Once she eventually figured out if she stayed in one place, it would come back around, she got completely soaked…

Which cooled her off from the walk…and dried nicely during our picnic.

After playing, picnicking, and drying off…we headed toward our campground for the evening…Swan Lake State Park in Carroll, Iowa.

But…what is a vacation, and especially one that goes through West Central Iowa without a picture with Albert the Bull??

Once we made it to the campground, we pitched our tent…

and got started on dinner. When there’s only 4 of you, and you’ve got a whole package of hotdogs and no leftover storage system…you get creative…like the double dog with cheese…with a side of hotdog. Yum! I think Nathan probably had his quota for sodium for the week after this one meal.

But what is camping without smores?  No, we didn’t do the open flame this year. We opted for the camp stove method. We’ll leave open flame for another camping trip in the future.

Overall, camping went really well. It was beautiful weather, right up until about 3 a.m. when it started hailing. Thank goodness for wifi so i could check the weather from the tent. We, and our tent, made it through the night unscathed…but weren’t about to stay for round two which was headed for us later the next morning. We packed up in record time and headed to spend the day with Nathan’s parents.

We had decided to head for home, when we learned Dan Wardell was going to be in Ames the next morning…so we made a pit stop there for the evening in order to catch his Reading Road Trip the next morning. It was great, as always. And nice to see our favorite “Superhero Dan.” as he’s known in our house.

A brief stop at the Story City Carousel later that day…(by brief…I mean we only rode it three times)

and onward toward home.

The Omaha Children’s Museum.

We got to the children’s museum and immediately decided we’d start upstairs at the dinosaur traveling exhibit. I remember seeing one of these exhibits with my grandma when i was little and thought it was pretty cool, so we were betting the kids would like it too.

Ellie and i had to check out the maiasaura. There is an episode of Dora where she and Diego were helping a “Maia” the Maiasaura get back to her family. It used to be my favorite episode next to Dora’s pirate adventure…just because it was double length and I knew it would hold their attention for 40 minutes.

I’m pretty sure Ellie thought the eggs were real at first…she kept asking why the one that was half out of the shell couldn’t get out.

At one point, Ellie and i were checking out the t-rex…and she was a little apprehensive about getting too close because it scared her…I told her to come to me and I’d pick her up. Being the kind of parent I am…I decided I’d put her a little closer to the head so she could still get a good view while “being safe.” It was at that exact moment, the t-rex moved its head to look at her, opened its mouth, and roared. She screamed like a little girl…(which I realize she is…but still), and I couldn’t stop laughing. She kept telling her daddy that I tried to feed her to the dinosaur.

In this exhibit, they also had a lot of camping stuff…a tent with books about dinosaurs in it, and a camp cooking section where you could “grill” veggies and meat. I’m not really sure what this had to do with the dinosaurs…unless of course, that isn’t beef evan is grilling…

Back downstairs…this was Evan’s favorite place to be…all dressed up and in the driver’s seat of the firetruck.

Or learning about pulley’s with his sister by going for a ride.

The ball room!! Both kids loved trying to figure out what would happen with the balls and how to get them to where they wanted them to go. I can’t believe we didn’t get a picture…perhaps its because we were too busy playing too!

There was one room…where they could see themselves dancing on screen…hilarious to watch! Here they are…Can you tell its Ellie and Evan??

And trying on stage make-up. Evan wanted me to paint a kitty on his face…Ellie wanted to do her own. I’m still not sure what it was supposed to be…but she seemed to have fun with it!

First impression:
Great place!! The kids had a great time. We played in the morning…sat outside and ate lunch…and went back in for a bit of the afternoon.

Poor parking! If you go, be prepared to pay for street parking…their parking lots don’t come close to holding all their traffic.