Go Big Red!

One afternoon we decided to go to Elephant Hall at the University of Nebraska. It's officially called Morrill Hall, but it's always been known as Elephant Hall.. It was always a favorite spot of mine when I was a child - and I love the fact my son loves it now too! It's very similar to the Natural History Museum here in LA. It's not really big, but at least you can see everything with a 6 year old in one day without any complaints of being tired.. ;)















After the museum, we took a little walk down the street to Memorial Stadium, home of the Nebraska Cornhuskers! Colin has been to one Nebraska game, but it was when they played USC here. This was his first chance to see the stadium.









To be honest, I don't think he was overly impressed. :)

Insurance Adventures and a Farm..

What to do when you get sick on vacation and need a doctor? We had two options - emergency room or finding a local provider our insurance would cover. We were staying in Leavenworth, Kansas. The nearest urgent care our insurance would cover was in Shawnee, Kansas. So we packed up the boy and went to the doctor. He was diagnosed with pneumonia - a very mild case, luckily. My husband had it before vacation, so I'm guessing that's how Colin got it, even though we tried to do everything we could to avoid contamination. He got some antibiotics, and the doctor said they would knock it out in two days.

The next day he was better - hardly coughing at all. So we tried to salvage a little bit of fun and went to Deanna Rose Children's Farmstead. He had a lot of fun there...

















Chris, on the other hand, maybe didn't have so much fun...



Colin was doing very well, until we took a hayrack ride that stirred up dust and his coughing. On the way back to Leavenworth, he started vomiting. It was not a good way to end the day for us, as we had to clean out the back of the van. Colin, on the other hand, felt completely fine and spent a few hours playing in the bath.

The next day we headed up to Lincoln, Nebraska to see my parents. Colin proceeded to vomit once or twice a day for the next 4 or 5 days. We ended up going to a different urgent care in Lincoln on the 4th of July, where we got another antibiotic that really did work well and right away, thank goodness. In the meantime, his Kansas grandparents came up to Lincoln, as did his great-aunt so we could have a nice 4th. We bought lots of fireworks, and had a fun shooting them off. Colin watched out the window, as it was too smoky for him to be outside. We kept things low key for a couple more days, with only family visits. Once he got over the vomiting and the coughing stopped, we crammed in a lot of activities in just a few days...

Next up, a trip to the University of Nebraska....

If you want to see more pictures, please visit Flickr.

Etsy-versary Giveaway Winner!

I went to random.org to pick the winner... and the number was 3, so Andie is the winner! Andie, I will be contacting you via e-mail for your address.

Thanks for playing! :)



p.s. the vacation blog posts will resume soon...

Marceline, MO and Walt Disney

One of the best days of our vacation we traveled to Marceline, Missouri. Marceline is where Walt Disney lived as a child. He never forgot his time there, and it became a huge influence in his films and Disneyland.



We first visited the Walt Disney Hometown Museum. It resides in a renovated Santa Fe train depot. The trains still whiz past the depot, but none stop there anymore. I loved how the tour guides would patiently pause during the train whistles!



Pictures are not allowed inside the museum, but if you scroll all the way to the bottom of this site, under Missouriland, you can see a couple of pictures. The museum has lots of photos and letters, and an original midget autopia car. We had a wonderful tour guide - unfortunately I can't remember her name! During one of Walt's visits back to Marceline, he stayed at her house because the town hotel was not the best and they had the only air conditioning in town. It was really amazing to meet someone who had known Walt!



Our next stop was Walt Disney Elementary School. It was being worked on, but we still managed to peek inside the door to see some original artwork by Disney legend Bob Moore.



From there we decided to stroll down Main Street. We first stopped at a wonderful ice cream shop, Sweet Tunes. I had a scoop of chocolate marshmallow, and since Chris can't have dairy, he had root beer. Refreshed, we started our walk...







Ever visit "Coke Corner" at Disneyland? It was modeled after this building..



We also stopped in Ripley Park. They were setting up for their 4th of July celebration, so we didn't linger too long.





We also went to Marceline's other park - the Walt Disney Municipal Park. It was home to Midget Autopia. If you're curious about the Disneyland ride, please visit Yesterland.. it has loads of info, including the fact that Walt and Roy donated this ride to Marceline when it closed at Disneyland. All that's left of it now is the neglected track at the park and a single car at the Hometown Museum. Chris walked the entire track...



From there we headed to Walt's dreaming tree and barn, and the house he lived in.





I'll start with the dreaming tree... The poor tree is not in such good shape these days. It was diseased, and hit by lightning. I wanted to sit under it, but just standing under the ground was so soft and spongy - it was a very weird sensation!





They have planted a sapling of the dreaming tree, called son of dreaming tree.



Just past the trees is the replica of Walt's barn.





I didn't get any good shots of the inside, which is covered in names of visitors. Unfortunately, we didn't have a pen, so we were unable to add ours. I'm okay with that, though, as our son opted to spend the day with his grandparents that day. Next time he'll come with us and we'll all get to sign. :) Here's some lovely views from the barn..





On our way back to Leavenworth, we saw a sign for a covered bridge. We decided to check it out since it wasn't far off the highway. But... it did involve a few turns, a few gravel roads, and a hike through an area that had flooded not long before we got there. The bridge was pretty cool, but it was in the middle of nowhere and sits over nothing since the creek moved decades ago.



And that was the end of our fun for a bit. We got back to find out our son had a fever of 102 and had not really been well all day. I felt like the worse mom ever - leaving to gallivanting around the countryside when I should have been with him. But other than a cough that we thought was allergies, he showed no indication of being ill. More on that tomorrow...

If you want to see more of my vacation pictures, please go to my Flickr. :)

Fun in Emporia

One day on our vacation we went to Emporia, Kansas. It's a halfway point for us to meet up with relatives that we probably wouldn't have seen otherwise. It was a fun afternoon, even though Colin was coughing periodically through the day. We attributed it to allergies.... but more on that later.

Emporia has a small zoo - the David Traylor Zoo. It was nice walking around, and fairly shady, which was good since it was a very hot day.





After the zoo, we went to Peter Pan Park. This was such a lovely park - and huge! it had several playground areas, a lake, and lots of beautiful trees! I just had to take lots of photos!









That's all I have for today... Tomorrow I'll tell you all about Marceline, MO - Walt Disney's hometown! :)