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Posts Tagged Vacation

Nebraska Weekend

Jul 23

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family | No Comments

Baseball and Blair 015xWe got back from Nebraska on Sunday night, but we left the video camera behind so I didn’t have pictures to upload until now.  We had a really good time, with birthday parties for both of my brothers kids.

Brody, who is turning 5, had a John Deere-themed party at my parents’ farm.  Grandpa got out the Gator and took the kids for a “safari” ride around the lawn, cornfield and pasture.  Grandma set up a scavenger hunt, which the older cousins helped to captain.  It kind of ended up being more of a competition between them than anything meaningful for the five-year-olds, but it was fun.  A John Deere cupcake-cake and presents finished off the party, and then Nate and his family stayed there for dinner as well.  We also got some horse rides in, which Katherine was very pleased with.

Sunday it was Brooke’s turn.  She’s only two months younger than Thomas, turning 8 this year, and she had a party at her parents’ lake house in Elkhorn.  They played in the lake (which was pretty darn cold) and had boat rides and tubing.  Thomas stayed behind when we left with Katherine to come home, and had two sleepovers with Brooke and Brody later in the week, so it was a good catch-up time for him.

As promised, here are some of the best pictures!

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Branson Vacation Pictures

Jul 9

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family | 2 Comments

Silver Dollar City 004As promised, here are the cameraphone pictures Robin took.  I’m really very impressed by that new phone of hers.  Not only does it have a nice 2 MPixel camera, it has a full keyboard for texting.  It may not have the chrome and bling of a Blackberry or an iPhone, but it also doesn’t cost like one.

We’ve got Thomas and Katherine, of course, and me, and also Robin’s folks and Robin’s sister Polly’s kids Cordelia and Hayden also.  Polly, Rick and cousin Aubrey were there later on but we don’t have any photos of them, and since Robin took all the shots there aren’t any of her this time either.

You also won’t see any shots of me jamming myself into the tiny seats on the kid rides, which would have made excellent video if we had brought the camera along.  Maybe next year.

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Back From Vacation

Jul 6

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family | No Comments

SDC-7-30-2006--1[1]We got back from our traditional yearly trip to Branson, Missouri on the Fourth.  This year we left on Wednesday at noon and came back Saturday, which gave us two and a half days at Silver Dollar City, which is usually our sole destination.

The weather was great, with temperatures in the low 80s.  Saturday was predicted to be in the 90s, but it ended up raining a bit which kept the temperatures down.  And the kids and I did all the water rides that day anyway, so it could have been 110 and the kids and I wouldn’t have noticed.

This year, with Robin being pregnant, I was on kid ride duty.  Luckily, the kid rides at SDC are a lot of fun, and listening and watching them whoop and holler on the rides is quite a bit more fun than going on rides myself.

Although Thomas is tall enough to ride the rollercoasters now, he’s convinced himself he’s scared of them, so we didn’t go on any.  I did get him to stretch a bit by going on some other rides he was reluctant to try, so I consider it a success.  I still think I can get him on Powder Keg next year.

The food was generally good.  It’s the best theme park food I’ve experienced, but it is theme park food and eating cheaply or completely healthily is just not in the cards.  We did bring in a pack of carrots this year to mitigate the lack of vegetables, which was a good idea, just not sufficient in and of itself.  The saving grace was the motel continental breakfast, which has improved over the years to the point where I can almost eat a big breakfast there and wait until dinnertime to eat again, even with the energy expended walking all over the park.

So it was a great trip, with lots of fun to be had by all.  And we got back in time for fireworks on the Fourth and still had Sunday to decompress before the week.  Unfortunately, we forgot the camera, so we have few pictures.  Robin took several on her cameraphone, but we are still working on how to get them downloaded.  I’ll update when we figure it out.

Update:  We did figure it out (it wasn’t hard) — but the photos are at home and I haven’t uploaded them yet.  I’ll post in the next couple days with the best ones.

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