I would rather have driven this...

We planned one of our first actual family vacations that didn't have visiting family or a wrestling camp tied to it. Big first for us! We decided on the Omaha Zoo since we've heard such great things about it. (Actually, it was because we were originally going to go to a wrestling tournament there, but that fell through, so we decided to go anyway and visit the zoo. But, details...)

The drive there was very uneventful -- we stopped for a picnic lunch, and the kids watched movies and napped in the car. Then we found the motel... ... ...

-I won't go into details about the jogging stroller that was strapped to the roof of the van - Ernie feels badly enough. And I probably would have done the same thing. Suffice it to say, we now have a low rider.

-The motel was supposed to have a pool. It was either VERY well hidden, or the internet lied! After telling all the kids they could swim, they were just a little disappointed. We decided to do something else to get them out of the less-than-desirable conditions of the motel. After finding a park on a map, we set off to find it. Along the way, we found a huge street fair -- lots of tents and vendors. We thought it looked like fun -- lots of walking, things to see, neat street-side shops, music...ect. After paying out $6 parking fee, the attendant said "Try to park under the shelter, we're in a warning". Yeah. You know where this is going.

-We get all the kids out of the car, walk 4 or 5 blocks, and are greeting with this siron. No one seems to be in a big hurry, so we continue on our way. As we walk down the street, all the vendors are closing up their tents. Nice -- we paid 6 bucks to get there at closing time. As we're wondering what to do, we notice Jacson is heading towards the music tent. We follow him and hear the announcer telling us we are in the path of a severe storm -- 90 mph winds, rain, and golf-ball sized hail. After being herded 2 levels down under a bank building, we spend the next 1 1/2 hours trying to entertain our kids in the midst of a few hundred other people. After we were 'released', we found that there was very little left of the street fair -- tents had been completely blown over, many vendors lost everything - trees were uprooted. We were very lucky, to say the least.

-We decide it's time to head back to our hotel to eat supper as there was so much storm damage we didn't know where else to go. The kids are less than thrilled to go to bed at 8:00 since they've spent most of their day sitting in one place or another, but we convinced them that they needed lots of rest for the busy day Saturday.

-That's when we discovered that the air conditioner in our room only worked 10 minutes out of every 4-5 hours. Did I mention we were on the 3rd floor in a VERY stuffy hotel?? We opened the window, and listened to the rap music coming from across the street the rest of the night.

-At 5:00am, Brittin decided enough was enough and he was done sleeping - which, of course, ended it for the rest of the kids. By 7:00, we decided to just get ready and go -- the kids would be tired, but we would do our best to have fun. We navigated our way to the zoo amoungst broken branches, downed trees, and lost siding -- only to find that it was closed as a result of the storm.

Nice -- we have driven 450 miles round trip to stay in a crappy hotel. (And no one ever did steal the broken stroller from the top of the van. Nor did it save our van from hail damage.) We managed to talk the kids into coming back home to go to the local zoo -- but of course by the time we got there, it was windy and rainy, and we only spent about 45 minutes there.

The picture of the van is the only one I took of the entire weekend -- because, really -- who drives around in a van with the word Menopause written in huge letters???

We asked the kids if they wanted to go on vacation next weekend. The concenses was a REALLY loud "NO!!!" I think they would rather drive around in a van with the word Menopause on the side of it.