Homemade Escape Rooms

Mario and I made the boys an escape room at our house on Saturday.  They loved it.  So they made Mario and I one today.  I loved their props.  They tied Mario's hand to my hand to make it extra tricky but they left the key to untie ourselves in an easy location and we totally missed it.  It was supposed to be the first key we found.  Ha ha!  

I'm grateful to Melissa because she is the one that introduced us to this fun game.

Christmas in Florida (Continued)

I'm sitting here starting the preliminary plans for our trip to Florida for Christmas.  It is a tradition I started a couple years back that Mario didn't like at first but now he's on board and even insisting that we go even though he is getting low on use or lose leave.  As I was thinking about this trip coming up in a few months, Irealized that I never got around to posting pictures from the second week of our Florida vacation last year. That was the week we got to spend with grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins.  It was by far our favorite week.  Also, Eric got to join us for the second week, so that made it even better.

We spent a lot of time at the beach and on the boat with Billy and his family and having so much fun with Henry at his house.  As you can tell from the last couple pictures, we weren't excited about leaving Florida to come back to Nebraska.

Sophomore Year

We moved Eric back into his dorm this morning.  He has the exact same room as last year so he knew exactly how he wanted to set up. He and Mario got the room all organized by the time I returned from running a couple errands with the boys.  I cried the whole day last year when he moved in.  This year, I shed a few tears as Eric and I sat in his room for a few minutes alone.  But other than that, I'm doing much better than last year.  I will miss him but I'm optimistic that we will see him often and if not often enough, I'll start bribing him with steak dinners if he'll come home or lunch dates to his favorite restaurants.

Can you spot the photo of me and Eric in one of the pictures below?

His roommate, Ryan, decorated the living room before he got there.  Eric thought it looked more like a girls' dorm but at least it's comfortable and done.  Ryan made lots of crafty type things to put on the walls to go with his theme which I think is the beach.  We'll see if any of the other guys make some changes to his design.

Jeanne's Lake

Our last weekend before school started again was spent in Missouri at Jeanne's lake.  Josh's mom is so generous to share her home with our family everytime we go to see my sister and her family.  It ranks right up there with going to Florida as their favorite vacation spot. 

It's fun for the four boys to run wild in the woods and swim and fish all day.  Lately, Zach has been obsessed with fishing so he spent most of his time fishing while the other three boys swam and explored.  He caught quite a few bass on this last trip so he was pretty excited.  

I was excited to have Mario and Eric join us.  Work tends to keep them back in Omaha while the boys and I go to play.  But they both took time off to go last weekend.

I love the peace I feel being out in the woods away from the craziness of life.  I love spending that time with Melissa and her family.

Unfortunately I only got pictures of Zach fishing this time and not all the cousins together.  Maybe Melissa has some better pictures she can send me so I can add to these pictures.

Another Escape Room

Nate and Zach really wanted to go to an escape room with us since they didn't get to go to the one we did for Eric's birthday.  So I decided we would celebrate the end of the first week of school with a trip to the new escape room here in Omaha.  We invited Lindsey and Greg Anderson to join us.  The theme was saving Lincoln.  We had to unlock the safe that held Boothe's gun before the hour ran out.  We made it out with about 27 minutes to spare.  We were going so fast that the owners thought we were going to be out in about 15 minutes but a large safe and morse code delayed us a little.  It was a lot of fun and boys are  already asking for more.  Thanks to Melissa for introducing our family to these fun activities.

Camping with Cousins

Melissa and her boys came up the weekend before Eric's birthday.  On my bucket list before leaving Omaha again (one day) was to camp in the cabooses at Two River's State Park near us.  The cabooses have been converted to cabins and I thought the boys would love staying in one.  Fortunately there were two nights available the week Melissa was coming.  The boys had fun riding bikes and swimming.  Zach had fun fishing, fishing, and more fishing.  Melissa and I enjoyed playing games with Mario, Eric and Caitlin when they came up to visit us.

Below is a picture of the frog Zach accidentally caught.

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In the above picture, the boys are riding their bikes as fast as they can back to the caboose because the tornado sirens were going off. Zach had been fishing at a lake near the caboose when he heard them go off and he immediately ran back to get me so we could go find the boys at the swimming lake.  He was very concerned about their safety.  Fortunately, they didn't ignore the siren and they were already riding back when we found them.

After checking out of the cabooses, we went bowling and had some shaved ice.

We love that the cousins only live 6 1/2 hours away.  Actually it would be better if they lived in same town. But who can complain, we get to see them several times a year and that's much better than it was when they lived in Florida.

Back To School

Today the boys start 7th grade, middle school. I laughed when they each came down this morning because they look a little like twins with those colors they each chose for the first day of school. 

Happy 19th Birthday Eric!

Eric is officially an adult in Nebraska now!  I no longer have to take him to the doctor or dentist.  That makes me sad though.  I like doing those things with him.

We began his birthday celebration with a trip to an escape room here in Omaha.  Melissa and her boys were in town so we dragged her along to help us solve the clues.  Unfortunately, we got stuck and weren't able to break out.  It was such a disappointment especially considering how close we were.  The final clue had the letters B L O D Y.  It was so easy but so difficult for us. All we had to do was rearrange them to spell Dolby and that would have unlocked the final lock.  But we didn't even know if we had the correct letters to unscramble. Hopefully we will do better next week when we do another one with the twins.

We had ugly cake Saturday night so we could celebrate his birthday before Missy left the next morning. 

On Eric's real birthday on Monday, we took him to a Japanese Steakhouse called Genji here in Omaha.  He had been to Kobe several times recently so we wanted to try something new.  It was good.  Some things we like better at Kobe but that was ok.  The kids enjoyed catching the flying food with their mouths.

We went home with plenty of leftovers. After dinner, we all sat on the couch to watch the Olympics and tried to recover from all that food.  When we felt a little better, we dug into Eric's ice cream

cake.

I feel very blessed to be Eric's mom.  He is wise beyond his years and he brings our family much joy and happiness.  I am so sad that he will be moving back into his dorm in about 10 days.  Boy will I cry again.

Happy Birthday Ericson!