When I first held my goddaughter, she cried and cried. But then I started talking to her in her language (mostly “a-gooo” and other babyspeak) and sticking out my tongue at her, which she thought was very funny… and we hit it off quite well.

I feel a special bond with all of my nieces and newphews.   I’ve been lucky enough to see all of them within the last two weekends, between my trip to Kansas City and my trip to Dallas.

Our plane trip yesterday was interesting.  We got to the airport at 8pm.   We had to check the baggage in with the carrier, then hand it over to TSA.   I wanted to tell them, “You DO NOT want to open this bag”, only because it was smashed shut in order to zip it shut.   I thought they might take it the wrong way. 

My daughter and I were already exhausted.   It had been a long day.    Then the flight was delayed for an hour.  I informed my daughter.    She said, “shit”.    I had to laugh, then tell her to not say that word anymore.   She apologized, saying, “Sorry.. that just came out.”    (could have been worse, right?)

Then, the gate was changed, requiring us to go upstairs and take the tramway over to another terminal. 

We finally took off at 10:15pm.   My daughter feel to sleep immediately.  I fell asleep somewhere inbetween the flight attendant leaving me with coffee and picking up my coffee.      

We landed in Omaha just before midnight.   TLK said, “Mom… that flight felt like it was just 2 seconds.” 

Our intended destination was the airport, just to get out of the house. We stopped by a roadside parking spot and noticed a bridge beside Carter Lake, and decided that looked more interesting than planes taking off.

This is a not a no-wake lake, so the ski boats and other boats are out there speeding along.

(all photos are clickable)

There were tons of lily pads, but we didn’t see any amphibians.

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A couple of ducks hit the water just as the sun was beginning to set.

If you look carefully, or if you just have a good eye, you can see Luna in the sky.

The Omaha skyline. The tallest building is the First National Bank building, which is the tallest skyscraper between Minneapolis and Denver. If you click the link above, you can see some interesting facts about this building, like it stands in the former location of the 17-story Medical Arts Building, but part of the wall from the Medical Arts building still stands inside of the tower.

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This involved some quality time with my sister-in-law, brother and niece and nephews, my daughter and my husband, and a LOT of walking. I think we covered the whole zoo except for the cat complex and the desert dome.

It was a hot day, even though we got to the zoo at 9am and we were getting ready to leave around 12:30. My nephew asked to go into the desert dome. My brother and SIL asked, “Isn’t that just a big desert?” “Yeah,” I said, “and it’s hot”.

We decided on the gift shop instead.

By the way, there is a malayan tiger due to deliver cubs around August 1. You can see the tiger cub ultrasound here.

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My husband picked up a bit of bread and said, “I want to see if the swan will come to me”, then he dropped the bread at the last minute and the swan didn’t get his snack. So, I decided to pick up a piece of bread myself and handfeed it to the swan.

Umm, swans cannot apparently distinguish food from fingers, so he bit down ever-so-slightly on my fingers. Which made me laugh. And the other people who were standing there? They laughed, too.

The swan was beautiful. We watched him chase a waterfowl very quickly across the lake. Anytime this bird got into the lake, the swan was off to chase it out.

UPDATE: Turns out that swans nest in March and April and become very territorial during nesting season. Also, for some reason, swans just don’t like ducks and geese.

The swan was doing something called “busking”(neck curved back and wings half raised), which makes it appear bigger than it really is (which was actually quite big anyway). Mute swans are close to 30 pounds (weight-wise to you UK dwellers) and their wingspan can be up to 90 some-odd inches. Wow.

That voice you hear in the background is my little kid.

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We spent 4 hours with my niece, nephew, my Mom, who is visiting, my brother, and my SIL, who is recovering from back surgery.
They all seem to be doing quite well, and the 4 hours went very fast.

My mom got up early that morning and made Ghirardelli brownies… to die for…

We visited this park, where the kids played softball and on the swings and jungle gyms. We caught pictures of a turtle and a gaggle of geese.

The highlight of the visit, I think, was having my niece run out of the house when we got there, all excited and screaming in delight at the sight of us. She has a high-pitched little voice that’s fun to hear.

The Little Kid handed down her first bicycle, and my niece was all-too-delighted.

Kansas City is a nice place to be. For some reason, I just really enjoy large cities. And, of course, the smell of barbeque is always in the air. As luck would have it, on our way out of town, we found a place called “Bandanas” to hook up with some barbequed beef, gourmet potato salad and some creamy coleslaw. My daughter wanted to know if we could come back for lunch tomorrow.

Before we knew it, we were home and heading to bed. It was a good trip.

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