Omaha Trip

We went to Omaha for the weekend. Carter made, um, friends I guess you could say, with this goat at the zoo. Carter was having fun and looking eye to eye with his buddy. But I'm not so sure the goat was messing around. When the goat lowered his head and stared back at Carter I quickly stopped taking pictures and yelled for Carter to give him some space. :) I think Carter may have been seeing stars if he hadn't backed away from their little showdown! One purpose of our Omaha trip was the Mid-America Music Festival. Lauryn and Grant had prepared two pieces on the piano and played them in front of a judge for a score. It was a great experience for the two of them. Their hard work paid off-they both scored at least a 95% and earned a trophy. This is a picture with their teacher who traveled up to support her students.

Here we are listening at the door to Lauryn's pieces. Nobody is allowed in. It's just the child and the judge.

We also got to go to the Winter Quarter's Temple. It's such a beautiful site, and has a lot of history. I have some pioneer ancestors who stopped there on their way out to Utah with the wagon and handcart companies. It's amazing what kind of strength and conviction they showed to walk all the way to Salt Lake. Wow!

The kids decided to sell soda during our neighborhood garage sale. They made $14. What good little entrepreneurs!

Hodge Podge of Fun at the Klein's

To my delight, our berry patch totally took off this year. We had tons of blackberries every day for almost a month. It was so fun to let the kids just pick and eat as many as they could.

This is just one day's worth of berries. Can you say blackberry jam?

Elise definitely enjoyed the blackberry pie we made.

Introducing our new play house! I am so excited because this was the thing I looked forward to most with the basement being finished. It turned out exactly like the picture I drew for Jeff when he asked me what I had in mind. What a handy guy:) The ceiling goes up a little higher above the castle so Carter and Lauryn can actually stand all the way up, though its hard to tell from here.

Elise and Lauryn playing the Wii! :)

Gotta love bubble baths!

Lauryn and Elise were snuggling and Lauryn was reading stories. Elise was not too happy with me disturbing their moment so she was being camera shy. :)

Grant's had his first tennis match. Since this, he played some other matches and two other tournaments. He got to the finals in one and the semi's in the other. It was great experience and lots of fun. We love our new family sport :)

Carter got put into a time out and Elise, who adores him, couldn't let him sit in the corner alone:)