Spring Flurry

It's a busy time here at Myers house. We're planning a carnival for Jack's school. It's gonna be a big hum dinger of a festival complete with rides, inflatables, food, and all sorts of fun stuff.

We're battling weird weather. Freak spring snow storms that delight young golden retrievers. When the snow melted bright green long grass emerged. Proms were canceled. And basebal games. Weird.

And we're playing catch up. Jackson earned this honor roll bumper sticker last quarter. But I forgot to 'blog' it. He's working really hard and we are very proud of him.

Lastly I'm publishing my blog. Yep. I'm terribly excited. It's through a web site called blurb.com and it's fairly inexpensive. I'll be able to have a bound copy of this crazy site and a printed diary of 2008.

the best zoo

We're off to the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha. It was amazing. We spent over 6 hours watching animals up close. We even saw silverback gorillas in full-on stand up and thump the chest activity. Boy do those suckers move fast.

The best exhibit was the Desert Dome. And underneath the Desert Dome was the Kingdom of the Night, the cave and my favorite exhibit the swamp. Ok. I had more than one favorite.

After lunch we explored the jungle. This involved a rope bridge. How cool is that.

Ack. What kind of creature is this.

Spring Break

We're off. It's spring break, the sun is warm and bright, and we've been itching to explore a little. So we loaded up the truck and headed north to Omaha.

Our first stop was the Omaha Children's Museum. Lauren really enjoyed the theater and it's costumes.

They had a great exhibit about presidential campaigns. Jackson is practicing his hand shaking.

This is my beautiful sister and best friend Debbie. We journey together not just on spring break trips but in life.

Hotel pools are great. Whole vacations of our childhood were planned around hotel pools.

Bodies that have sat in the car for hours need to wiggle and jump.

This was Erin's first stay in a hotel. She was wild. The rest of us were nestled in our beds with the covers to our ears and our eyes were heavy. But not Erin she was demonstrating jumping jacks. She was a bit confused. She thought maybe we were all just napping or something. She announced "ok guys 2 minutes." Jackson finally hopped up and opened the curtains to show her that it was dark outside and tried to explain once again how the hotel thing worked.

Not Your Typical Tuesday

The Myers won tickets to the Blue's game from the Blue's web site. So off we went, on a not so typical Tuesday. Yowser were they good seats. Not only did we have a perfect view to watch the Blues just hammer the Stars, they gave us free food. Oh yea they did. Ushers went up and down the isles offering all sorts of delictables. Anybody want a hot dog? Peanuts? An ice cold beer or soda? I was Cinderella at the ball baby.

I just love wearing my jersey. It's such an amazing feeling being in a crowd of 19,000 plus people who love the same thing that you do. People who go to bed wondering about the need of a better back up goalie. (no offense Ben) Who sit in traffic hoping that Murray will play the kid line together. Who find themselves suddenly cursing perfectly good cities like Columbus or Nashville. And there is no prettier place in the spring than Market street. It's lined with pretty little pear trees that bloom in the race to the playoffs and rain down soft petals and the smell of spring. We saw their fresh little buds and know that spring is coming.

Before we went to the ball we went to the zoo. St. Louis has a great zoo. And it's a great way to enjoy a perfect spring afternoon.

The animals were almost giddy with spring. This adorable baby elephant ran and played, flipping his sweet little trunk around in delight, and even swam in his little pond.

These penguins had just been fed and were in the middle of a roising game of tag. It's not every day that penguins or hippos or elephants play within a few feet of you. But what was even more breath taking to this midwestern mama......

was this. We haven't measured Jack recently but John is 6'2". Oh Lordy. That's my 13 year old. All grown up right before my very eyes.

The Coaches Dinner

Every year the Mustang coaches get together to celebrate their season. This year at a great Japanese steak house. The kind that throws your food and carries on with knives. Ok. I do this in my kitchen most every night but we just call it clumbsy. Seriously though we had a great time with some good friends. And had a great steak. We were all gussied up so we had Jack take our picture. Evidently it wasn't much of an eye opening experience for John.

Somehow in our reporting of the trials and headlines of February we left off Moses. And he just might have been the best part of February. The boys brought him home on a Friday after school. John had seen him running in the neighborhood the day before. He stayed with us the weekend while we frantically tried to find his owners. The whole bang... posters in the neighborhood, ad in local paper, listing with lost dog registry, even a trip to the vet to check for microchip.

We did find Moses owner. Our friends and next door neighbor fell in love with him. And boy is it easy to do. They've named him Moses cause he was lost in the wilderness. He's loved and is loving his new crib. Well everything but that darn frilly sweater and that was a pretty cruel thing to do to a fellows privates. Clip clip. Little Moses is best friends with their beagle Shiloh. We can look out the window and watch them playing in the yard. And instead of having to sleep under someone's porch he gets to curl up with his new human pack. Don't ya just love a good ending.

No More Monkey Mountain

Ok. Enough of the Monkey Mountain. Sorry to have kept you hanging for so long.

It's Oscar time here at Myers house. Which means the annual Oscar party. The same group of friends have been gathering to watch the Oscars for a long time now. We used to dress to the nine's in the most gawdy prom dresses we could find. But ya know it's like a 4 hour show. Sitting in sequins with a neckline that pinched just wasn't cutting it. Some years we dress according to the movies. One year my sis and I went as cowboys with fishing poles and arrived inseparably hugging ala Brokeback Mountain. This year's theme was comfort. My friend Diane K. does it up right. I won the Oscar for guessing the most Oscar winners.


I love the Oscars. More so this year because I've actually seen 6 of the movies nominated.

Last fall Jackson studied the Dave Ramsey fianncial management series for teens. His Sunday School teacher challenged the kids to spend $5 in a way that would honor God. Jackson used his to buy dog bones. Then this weekend we visited the shelter and loved on some of God's sweetest creatures. Including the very long and lanky Pistol Pete. He just loved Jackson and his neck. His light little kitty dough action tickled. Jackson just might be a really good dog trainer but he could easily be the cat whisper. He's got a way with the kitties. By the way it took him about 3 minutes to get to the usual "hey could we keep this one" question.

I've been researching family history. The Midwest Genealogy Center nearly caused me to collapse in an overwhelmed heap. A place with an entire shelf of books on little old Keytesville, Missouri. Oh my. John was a good sport and came along for the grand tour. For some reason I thought it might only have records from Missouri in a part of a regular library. Oh no. It houses records of all 50 states. Census records, passenger list, hundreds of thousands of obituaries, civil war records, revolutionary war records, and even slave and plantation records.

And now something completely different.......

Just for the record a tornado has not swept through my neighborhood. But the kids have been having a blast making various forts and unexplained creations in the trees behind the house. They spent the better part of a Sunday afternoon plunking around out there. Can't quite describe what the heck it is. But they are having an awful good time being kids.

A Day on Monkey Mountain

Jackson and I climbed Monkey Mountain. It was a steep climb to a beautiful prairie vista like open space.

With a beautiful view.

The next day was super. Well it was Super Bowl Sunday. We watched the big game with Mom and Harold. Deb and the girls joined in the party.