Wednesday June 5 , 2013

Ethan has started back to Gymnastics.  I have no idea how he can do any of the stuff I see him and his class mates do - but they manage to do the twists, turns, jumps etc. with aplomb.
As the boys exited the gym, I noted that they were all very serious minded young men and quite good looking - the bunch of them.   Yep, I can see them at the Olympics some day - and every young woman in the world will drool over how handsome they are.....although I wonder just how many of these boys will stick it out to that level.  After all the whole gym smells like foot odor.  I guess if you want to be a gymnast, foot odor and chalk are part and parcel of your existence.

The new house has a vast garden of mint plants that have gone absolutely wild.  Jacob has lamented that the place looks really overgrown - and it does.  So this morning, the children and I went out to pull mint up by its roots.  We had a great time.  In the middle of this chore, the siren went off for the tornado warning system.  It is very loud and I doubt if anyone would not hear it.  The kids thought we should go to the basement, but the sky was clear blue and no cloud to be seen.  So I had them keep pulling mint out of the ground.  there was a large stand of sunflowers in the middle of it and those got pulled out as well.  Under the overgrowth, I found some strawberries growing.  I showed them to the children, and Lyla reached down and pulled it off the vine and then complained that it was not red, like the ones from the store.  We told her not to puck the strawberry but she would not listen.  I was totally surprised to find the strawberry plants.

there were a lot of ladybugs on the mint.  Two of them were mating and Oliver observed them and said, I guess they really like each other because one of them is hugging the other one.

For a break in the day, we went to "Lost in Fun" and the kids had a great time.  It is a play place where kids can be kids and no one gets excited about squealing, laughter, running, jumping, sliding etc.  Got a 15% discount for taking three with me, but the food there was VERY EXPENSIVE, so we did not eat there but rather came home to snack before going to pick up Sara from her last day of work and then take Ethan to Gymnastics.

I think the kids had a wonderful day.

The exciting trip to Nebraska

My trip to Nebraska began at Prescott at 11am shuttle to Phoenix.  Bill thought I was being excessive in leaving 4 hours before the plane left, but you are required to be at the airport 2 hours before the plane leaves so that you can go through the rigmarole of the TSA requirements.  What a pain that has turned out to be but we like cattle submit to the impersonal and sometimes demeaning processes these TSA people put us through.  Sometimes I think they have some sort of superiority complex that requires them to use their power to make everyone cower before them.  I guess some people have to get their jollies somehow and at the expense of the traveling public seems to be the ticket.  They terrorize little children by wanting to tear their favorite teddy bear open in an attempt to prove that the little kid is trying to smuggle drugs on board inside their very much loved and presently very raggedy bear.  It has its eyes and fur loved off and foot chewed beyond recognition.  They also round up frail old ladies in wheel chairs and frisk them for drugs or bombs while allowing fully robed and cloaked Muslim people through without so much as a ‘wanding’.  They don’t want to be accused of profiling!

Well, I got there at 1pm after a harrowing trip down in the bus.  Well it was not so harrowing as usual because Shirley, a fellow quilter from my guild in Prescott, sat beside me and we chatted the whole way to Phoenix.  The harrowing part is the craziness of traveling on I-17.  The big rigs scare me as they careen down the mountain side and they do not always stay in their assigned lanes etc.etc.etc.

When I got there I found the check in desk and the workers were harried beyond belief.  The tornado that had ripped through Oklahoma on Monday and made matchsticks out of the houses there, was now causing problems big time in the skies over the central part of the USA.  Many flights had been grounded elsewhere and never made it to Phoenix to pick up people to take them elsewhere and flights out of Phoenix had been grounded due to bad weather systems between the West and the East of the country.  My plane never made it out of Texas to pick me up and take me to Nebraska and so the workers had to find another plane headed for Nebraska so that I could get there.  As luck would have it, they found the last seat on US Air – a direct flight even- from Phoenix to Omaha but it left at 7pm instead of the 3pm that I was originally set to leave.  So that meant that I would not arrive at 9pm Nebraska time but rather at 11.30pm and Jacob picked me up and we drove to Lincoln arriving around 1.15pm.  In the luggage claim area, two ladies were fighting and screaming at each other due to the fact that one was perceived  as pushing herself ahead of the other to get out of the plane.  As it was, most of the people on the plane had been traveling most of the day, were re-routed from original flights to this one, and worse yet, were hungry and very tired.  Personally I was glad to be on the ground at last.  We did have a good and un-eventful flight from Phoenix and best yet, it was a straight through flight and no plane changing in Colorado.  I am not a fan of changing planes anywhere so that I can get to Nebraska.

In the morning the kids came in to get me up but I was already awake.  Sara and Jacob are now in their new home and the area is very unfamiliar to me so I had to have written directions to get the kids to school and to pick them up in the afternoon and to go get Sara from work.  Only got lost a couple of times but have enough knowledge of Lincoln to be able to find the correct roads to get everyone picked up and in their right places.

I have been here almost 2 weeks and it has been a whirlwind.  We have had some terrible storms and some tornadic activity just south of us but aimed right at Lincoln in its path of destruction.  We dodged the bullet  Jacob bought a radio that warns of tornado activity and it really makes a racket and will waken the dead, as my mother would describe it.

Through My Heritage.com site ,I have been able to make some headway with my Australian genealogy information.  One man is connected with my Uncle George and has Gatfield information.  I hope to get information from him to be able to send to Edgar and Christine because I do not think they have their genealogy done or even have interest in it, but they need to know where they are connected.

Sara has a couple of weeks yet before her baby is born and tomorrow, Monday 3^rd June, she has a doctor’s appointment.  I am anxious for this baby to be here, but she is more interested in having the baby come – that is