USA

Aye, it's been a while since I've been on here - we've been back in Idaho for a few weeks already and time is just flying by! Feeling of deja vu - I say phrases like that way too much - about time going fast. Anyway, been kicking around Pocatello and the house, and it's been good times being able to catch up on things around here and people we've missed. Smelling roses over here, I say.

Luckily we were in town again for this year's Relay for Life - they raise money for cancer awareness and research, as well as honor cancer survivors - can't beat that. My mom is of course my heroine when that word is uttered.

We’ve done a few things around the house and the yard, and mom has too – in fact, when she replaced her garage door with a new one, we happened to pull up behind her old one, go figure, ha!

A band came to Pebble Creek and we made a beautiful evening out of it - Charlie made friends with Cisco and we had a lovely evening at The Rock. And... after the power came back on, and we could actually hear the band …Elephant Revival.

The Berkeley Kite Festival was a wonderful event to go to. We went to go to the Denver Festival a couple years ago, only to be disappointed – this however, was totally different. A wonderful kite festival, lots of people, vendors and activities as well as catching up with family and friends in a picturesque setting. John and Gerry met us at the airport and took us to Berkeley on BART, and we had a great lunch together. They made sure we made it back to our hotel before they would leave us to go back home, how sweet they are. I was obviously very excited about my lunch. As always, yeah…

Our hotel was so nice, right on the marina and walking distance to the Festival – a great view from the balcony despite the bird poop.

The festival had tons of people watching the kite displays and flying their own kites. There was lots of line laundry and tons of skilled kiters – I was obsessed with the octopus and ended up with tons of pictures of them, as well as the Revolution kiters. Just incredible skill. Also people from Japan with their kites and taiko – made me miss taiko immensely! They had rokkaku fights that were fun as hell to watch – sounds odd maybe, but it was so fun to pick a kite and cheer for it. There are teams of choreography when it comes to a few different kites that are just incredible the things they can do with kites, crazy. And Maya made it over to the festival with her brother, and also picked us up for the airport - how good is she to us?! It's always fun trippin with Mom, love her!

On the way home, from the plane, we were able to see one of the many fires.

Leaving Omaha was more treacherous than expected - this wicked cloud system was actually pulling clouds up into it, and we stayed overnight at a WalMart parking lot. In Wyoming, to boot! hehe.

Our plans while leaving Omaha were to go to Colorado to do some mountain biking. Now, we have had plans to go to Colorado to do some skiing previously, and ended up at Powder Mountain in Utah. Seems that is our lot when we try to plan. The Keystone opening was delayed a week due to all the snow they had gotten pounded with this winter, so our plans changed yet again. As we were driving down the interstate in Nebraska, we decided to go to Moab, then against it, then to Salt Lake City – mountains got to have mountain biking, right? Well, although we never got around to biking, we did end up at Lagoon, where we hadn't been in AGES. And they actually have a pretty nice campground attached to it, complete with a river and a trail.

Jaclyn and Crystalyn and Vinnie the pup drove up to see us and grill out. Vinnie and Charlie weren't sure what to think of each other, it was either love or hate. When we went to Smiths to get the food, Marian's van was parked out front, but I couldn't find her wandering around the grocery.

No surprise here, but we were surrounded by kids and families. In fact, our neighbor at the campground told us how fun it was there, *if* you have kids. We just stared blankly at him, and had fun by our thirty-year-old selves. Yeah, we got nauseous, and yes we were tired, and yes my neck hurt, but hell yeah we had fun.

Goodbye Omaha! We had a wonderful time in Omaha, being able to do family activities and events like graduations, births, coffee with grandma, and weddings. We’ll miss it, honestly. But we won’t miss the tornado scares. Charlie will really miss the dog park and Elvis. Okay, Gus too.

Staying there so long this time, I was able to see the draw of Omaha – there really is a lot to do there – music, arts, biking, food, sports, etc. And that doesn't even take the family and friend aspect into consideration. Most of the events tie in somehow to alcohol, but hey, if I gotta…

We luckily got out just in time, as where we were parked in the fifth wheel is now home to two fallen trees, and loss of power for thousands. Thankfully, everyone is okay.

Hello. My name is Chelsea, and I am a foodoholic. I am the first to admit I have a food obsession, and I'm not embarrassed either. My niece Lauren shares this obsession with me, so we were both happier than shit to be at Brew Burgers during the visit of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. Thanks to the fact that Mike and Kristen are friends with the owner, we got to go and eat some great food and see Guy Fieri in real life.

Thanks to Dennis and his connections we got tickets to a College World Series game at the historic Rosenblatt Stadium! I had never been to a game, and had no idea how big it is. There were booths setup along the street by the stadium selling schwag and entertaining kids. Before the game we met up with the brand new Hilts (plural) and friends for pre game libations. Glad we got to go especially because the stadium is getting replaced by a new one in downtown Omaha within the next five years, which is a huge point of contention and controversy here in the Big O. Caution: don't bring it up unless you want to hear an opinion. However, the bright side is that the city has the contract for the CWS until the year 2035. And isn’t it a RULE that you have to sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame?!