Omaha

Omaha you say? Yep! My sister, Nicole, lives in Omaha, Nebraska along with here too cute family. Jared is going to Creighton University to become an Oral Surgeon. Anyway, it was long overdue for me to go visit her especially since I have flight benefits and there is a direct flight into Omaha from Salt Lake. I haven't been there in over a year and I have only seen her new baby boy, Ethan, once! I know, I think I win the worst sister of the year award! I was trying to wait for a time when Jason and I could go for a week but I decided that was never going to happen. So I picked up and left on June 8 (and Jason came June 12) and made my way to see my sister. It was perfect timing too cause it was Maeley's birthday on the 10th! It was a lot of fun just hanging out with the kids and my sister! My parents and brothers actually came the 10th on their way home from Washington D.C. (they were at the Holocaust Museum 1 day before the shooting! Scary!) On Maeley's birthday we all went bowling and went out to eat. I must say that my bowling skills have improved from bowling on the Wii...... I know it's not the same but I bowled about a 160! That is really good for me cause I usually don't even make it over 100! Emma and Maeley did awesome too! They would both walk up to the line with their bowling ball kick one leg back and then throw the ball down the lane at a super sonic speed of 1 mile an hour! It was so cute to watch. After bowling, we went to a mexican food restaurant, which was Maeley's choice, and while we were there she chewed a face out of a tortilla and put it up to her face. It was quite hilarious. You'll just have to see the picture. My favorite is that Maeley can't pronounce her "sp's" so for "spoon" she says "foon" and the best is for "sparkley" she says "farkoly"! It's the best! She got one of those water and glitter bouncy balls from Target and so she would always say, "where is my farkoly ball". Needless to say, this has become my new favorite word and I am obsessed with "farkoly" things now just so I can say it! You'll notice I used a farkoly border for the slide show just in Maeley's honor! Jason flew in on Friday afternoon and we had steaks for dinner and played a game called "Settlers of Catan". It's pretty fun but kinda wierd at first.

Then the next day we just hung out with the fam til early afternoon and then we continued our treck to visit all 50 states together. So we drove over the border into Iowa and saw the Kansasville Tabernacle and down into Missouri where we visited the Liberty Jail. It was a really humbling experience to see where Joseph Smith was in jail and to see the size of the jail. We spent the night in Independence, MO cause we just decided to continue on our church history tour. We went to the visitor center in Independence and then to far west where the corner stones of the Temple are. We wanted to continue to visit other sites but ran out of time since we needed to drive back to Nebraska to fly home. So we quickly drove across the Kansas border and made our way to the airport.

I have tried to get pictures of the state signs that say "Welcome to..." But they didn't turn out so well. We didn't really have the time to pull over and take it so we did a drive by but it didn't work.