Summer update

Since I just cannot get my act together to download my pictures and make proper posts, I'm going to do a quick update.

In late April we enjoyed a long weekend to visit my Aunt Karen in North Platte Nebraska.  She has been a teacher over 30 years and retired this year, so we went to attend her retirement dinner. What a wonderful weekend, we met so many of her friends, got to reconnect with my Dad's cousin, my uncle Tim, and really enjoyed the visit. There were several other teachers retiring and as we sat and listened to their co-workers, and students, and administrators admire them, I definitely felt that this community has had many prize teachers over the years, including my own aunt of course!  It was so nice to see the community take the time to honor and appreciate all that these educators have done for their children.

Though we were only in NP for a few days, we had a action packed time... We saw the Golden Spike - an observation tower at the Union Pacific rail hub.  We took lots of photos and videos for our nephews, who are all big fans of all things locomotive!  We also visited the local winery, caught the auto show, and of course introduced Don to one of Nebraska's greatest treasures, Runza's.  Don didn't expect much, I mean it is a fast food restaurant. However he was really surprised and couldn't believe how tasty these cabbage burgers were, (though not as tasty as mine).

A week later, we hosted my family for Mother's Day weekend. My community held it's first ever Arts Festival, so somehow I conned everyone into coming down and being on the set up crew for this event.  We were there bright and early at 4:30 am to help artists set up, and our shift was over by 9am.  Andrea and Kris brought Noah down in his new red wagon and we strolled through all the booths later that morning. Noah even got to ride on a kiddy train with Big John... it was really cute and I hope Annie gets a chance to post the video soon.

We've also been playing softball again this year. I'm updating today because as of now we've only lost once... but several of our big hitters are on vacation and we're up against the number 1 team tonight... so I guess stay tuned.  We've been having fun though, Don's hit his stride batting this year, he's had several home runs and many of them on out of the park hits.  Everyone asked me what he's been doing to become such a power hitter this year, and I told them how he's been doing yoga with me lately.  He loved that.

For Memorial Day weekend we headed to Raleigh to visit Don's Brother and Sister in law, who brought our nephews with them all the way from Northern Virginia so that we could see them. We had a great day at the lake and playground, then went to lunch at one of Don's favorite, the Armadillo Grill.  After lunch we headed to the Natural Science Museum in Raleigh and caught the "meet the animals" session. Which animal did we meet - SNAKES!  Peter was a little nervous at first, but quickly warmed up in time to PET not one, not two, but THREE SNAKES!  I held it together and was able to sit next to him, but I couldn't bring myself to touch any.

We also saw wonderful Dino bones, fish, and even got to go in a butterfly room while at the museum. What a wonderful trip - both boys seemed to enjoy it and Jill got some great pictures.  The next morning the DC Gardner's came by for a brunch at my parents house. The kids got to play with all Noah's toys and at one point Peter noticed his picture on mom's book case.  Who is that? he asked. Jill told him it was his "cousin" Noah.  Peter thought a minute and then declared, "Noah is my best friend!"  It was really sweet and we can't wait to introduce them later this fall at our Mountain vacation with both of our siblings families. 

That brings us to last weekend, which was supposed to be a quiet one.  We decided to take a morning drive down to an organic community farm south of the city, which was fun. But unfortunately on the way back we were in an accident... hit and run actually. Both of us are fine but the poor Accord didn't make it.   So now we're shopping for a "new -to-Don" replacement.  It was kind of sad because we loved that car, but we're very thankful it did it's job and we both walked away without a scratch.

Hopefully your summers have been going as well as ours. We'll post more updates soon - and hopefully I'll get those pictures up!