Wow!

Something I stumbled upon in my daily travels around the internet.

Unemployment rates by county in the US.

Anyone want to move to Nebraska?

What We've Been Up To

Here are some pictures of what we've been doing this summer.


Platte State Park in April.


Colin was very happy to be back in the woods.


And in the trees. This was the first tree he's climbed since he fell. I was so nervous and didn't know what to do, so I took tons of pictures. If anyone wants a million pictures of Colin in a tree, I've got them. Seriously, you could make a flip book.




This was at a city park near our apartments.


For Maryanna and Tim, this is what the "no swimming" area looked like before all the storms/rain. Notice the reeds are not above people's heads!


At the races. I promise this picture is candid. I'm thinking of sending it to a modeling agency. :)


Warming up.


Our pool.


I have my own parking space at the grocery store!


4th of July fireworks. I have never in my life seen a place quite like Nebraska for fireworks. They are allowed in town so people were shooting off everything from bottle rockets to the big mortars. There was a gun smoke haze in the air for days! (People were also shooting them off for days.) We went to Seward for their big fireworks display, because apparently it's amazing. The tiny town of 6,000 ends up with around 40,000 people for their 4th of July celebration. Unfortunately it was rained out, so we just hung around and watched the people in the neighborhoods shoot off stuff. It was as good as most fireworks shows I've seen. I can't imagine what the professional one would have looked like.


Colin make fire. Colin cook meat. :)

Platte State Park in July.


The puzzle we've been working on for months is FINALLY done! Even though Maryanna broke it. :) (Just kidding Maryanna. Colin did the same thing. Then Maggie, too. I never broke it, but did somehow manage to loose a bunch of pieces under the couch for awhile.)

We're Back!!

I'm sure many of you noticed our somewhat abrupt absence. As things would have it, it seems as though someone (something) hacked into our joint email account, the one we use to run this blog. Google noticed a problem and shut down our account. After a bit of confusion, we managed to get it back and everything should hopefully be back to normal. And hopefully no one will get anymore Viagra emails.

So catching up! Colin's schedule has changed and he is now on a team without anyone else from our training class. He likes the new team, though. So it's all good. He's now working 4 days a week, which means a longer day, but 3 days at home which is awesome! He's really, really enjoying teaching robotics at LPS. Summer school is taking a 2 week break and all Colin can say is, "I guess, at least I don't have to get up at 7am." I'm embracing life as a housewife again. :) I've been researching baby products day and night. Safety, price, ecological ramifications, length of use, etc., etc., etc.! My precious Gunter (the laptop I've had for 5 years) has finally gotten to the point where we can no longer afford to fix him, which has been a somewhat traumatic experience for me. (Traumatic may be a bit of an exaggeration.) Through Colin's ability to "work" the Radio Shack system, we now have a new laptop. I grudgingly admit that it is better than Gunter.

We've been enjoying the summer by spending a decent amount of time at the pool. We've also gone hiking & grilling a few times at one of the local state parks. We even made it out to the thoroughbred race once. And in baby news, we find out if it is a boy or girl on Thursday!! Many people think that you can tell boy or girl based on how the bump looks. So what do you guys think? Boy or girl? (24 weeks)

America's Next Top Maternity Model

Well Colin and I are no Nigel Barker and Tyra Banks, but we did our best with our Mother's Day fashion show. A special thank you to MamaO for supplying the fabulous wardrobe!


I'm not nearly as big as this shirt makes it seem. At least not yet.


I think this is quite possibly my favorite outfit of them all. (Minus the pants, that is.) I'm thinking it will still look good if I'm ever skinny again.


I was sad because, while the pants are super comfortable, I had a sneaking suspicion that they were supposed to be capris. But that is the story of my life. I should be used to it by now.



I thought a black shirt and dark pants required an edgy look. I don't think I pulled it off. I don't really know how to do edgy.


Ta-da! I was going for whimsy in this picture. This shirt took a little sorting out, but after a couple of wrestling matches with strings and fabric, I love it!

In other baby news, baby is the size of a yellow onion now. We should be finding out if it's a boy or girl soon and we will be sharing that with everyone we know! (And maybe even people we don't.) Tim, that should help with names. :P My morning sickness is all but gone, at least it is if I'm eat something all the time. (I've decided I want to become a food critique so I can eat all different kinds of food all the time and get paid for it.) My wedding ring is starting to give me grief. I took it off the other day for the first time since we got married.

We recently discovered that Lincoln is a very horse obsessed city. There is a thoroughbred track with races every weekend. Along with horse shows almost every weekend. We also found out that UNL has a weapons display in town for the summer. So hopefully we'll have some exciting pictures to put up in the next couple of weeks.

Gross, Just Gross

Well Colin and I have been having lots of fun lately. My morning sickness has been getting better, than worse, better than worse, etc. But we've gotten pretty used to it, so that's kind of old news. Then one day Colin got what we hoped was food poisoning. He'd eaten a bunch of Canadian bacon that I had thought tasted gross, so we blamed it on that. We figured food poisoning isn't so good, but at least its not contagious like the stomach flu. So we stocked up on Poweraid, soda, broth, and of course, lots and lots of water. (We already had crackers and rice thanks to me.) The worst part of it, is that anytime anyone throws up, I throw up. Any time anyone talks about throwing up, I at LEAST start gagging. So I couldn't even take care of Colin, because I was feeling almost as bad as he was! But we made it through and two days later all was right with the world. At least for a couple of days. Turns out Colin didn't have food poisoning and it WAS the stomach flu. How do we know? I got it. Round 2. Luckily Colin has a much stronger stomach than I, so it was just me sick this time. I found it really hard to balance my morning sickness and cravings with stomach friendly food, but I made it. And now, a couple of days later we're both happy and healthy and eating normal food. :)

Easter

I dressed up like the Easter bunny to give Colin his Easter basket. Yes, I do have pink footy pajamas. They were a gag Christmas present one year that I have found surprisingly useful. (They were GREAT for dress up a freshman day at Christendom!)


I forgot to take a picture of the basket before Colin dug into it. So this is the best I've got.


Colin coloring in his dinosaur coloring book.


Colin colored the T-rex, I colored. . . the other ones. He put a little more effort into it. :)


Colin enjoying his new Legos.


The Easter spirit was enjoyed by all. I have a picture of Colin with the ears on, too. But I promised it wouldn't go on the internet.

Our Mustached Car

I realize I don't actually have any pictures of our car. But it has a black guard of some type (I'm assuming its for bugs) on the hood that looks a lot like a mustache. So the first thing I thought of when I saw the car was the mustached cloud in the Dear Jamie video. We've semi-seriously named it Mustachio Car. (Not terribly creative I know, but our creative juices are not on top of their game at the moment.)

Here is Maggie driving us to Sioux Falls to get Mustachio Car.


The bluffs along. . . a river. I don't remember where we were, so I can't say what river. The Platte? Sioux? Missouri? Nile? I'm not sure.


Mom wanted a picture of our faces when we saw the car. We took the picture in the car rather than out, due to the cold.



Driving home in Mustachio Car.

Our Christmas Decorations

You Have Died of Dysentary

I have pictures of our place all decorated from Christmas and I will put them up soon, but before I do that, I thought I'd share some things we've learned about Nebraska so far. Some of them are trivia things we read about, some of them are things we've picked up on the streets (or from talking to people in banks).

Nebraska is all about having the biggest stuff. It is home to the largest indoor rain forest, largest porch swing (which holds 25 adults), largest aquifer, largest weight room (3/4 acre), largest rail classification complex (I don't even know what that means), largest producer and user of the center pivot irrigation system, largest woolly mammoth fossil, and the largest Kolache Festival (once again, don't know what that means).

Nebraska actually means "flat water" in Oto (Indian tribe).

Lots of super cool things were invented in Nebraska. Things like Kool-aide, the Reuben sandwich, 911, the strobe light, and Boys Town. And either Spam was invented here or just made here, I'm not quite sure which.

Nebraska used to be called "The Great American Desert" and then "The Tree Planters State" and now it's (of course) "The Cornhusker State".

The state motto is "Equality before the law." We're still trying to figure out exactly what that means, because "before" could go a couple of different ways.

And the reason why the post has this particular name is because Chimney Rock, the most popular Oregon trail landmark is in Nebraska.

We've also made such generalizations such as people named Levi are nice, tall, and skinny. And a place that usually has mild winters does not ALWAYS have mild winters. (We really should have moved to Alaska, it's warmer there right now.) Super Saver (grocery store) is AMAZING. Trees can be offensive.