Exploring Omaha with Mom

Wow, I can't believe how fast the past month has gone by!  Since my last post we have been gone visiting family and friends, attending weddings, camping, baby showers, and then having mom mom visit us at our new home for the first time and exploring Omaha with her.  She was our first guest and it was SO nice to finally be able to accommodate her better than we have been able to with friends and family visiting in the past.  Being in a house 3.5 times bigger than our old apartment makes a pretty big difference!  I am still so excited about having a garage after years of giant apartment complex parking lots! Anyways, I have lots of blogging catching up to do but most recently...

Here are some of the things we did with my mom...

First we went to the World of Mexican Pottery which is located on S 24th Street between M and O streets in Omaha which is a cool little historic district.   Renowned for its cultural influences, including the historic location of Omaha's Greek, Russian, Polish and Czech immigrant communities, as well as the city's current growing Latino community, including Mexicans* 
World of Mexican Pottery is a unique store, tons of real clay chimneys, planters, urns and other decor that is really really well priced!  You can get a pretty clay fireplace/chimney for under $100 and they are gorgeous!  My mom wants to get one but will have to plan a trip to drive out here to be be able to take it back home.

 After walking through the rest of that historic district, we had enough time to drive up to the Mormon Trail Winter Quarters for a free tour.  It was really interesting and didn't take too long (which was good with the kids).  They had a little sod house/cabin set up with 2 beds inside and a little loft above both, a tiny eating area and fireplace.  It was so tiny and apparently 2 families/~15 people would share one of those little houses.

That night we got my mom to play pool with us on our pool table that came with the house.  At first she seemed a little reluctant but then once she got going she wasn't too bad and was having fun, she is so cute!  My mom and I played a game and it was going so slow! lol! I asked Tyler "I wonder what's the longest game of pool every played"... his reply was "We're finding out right now!" lol!  My mom beat me but it was close!

We took her to the spray park and fed the geese...

We played in the sink to cool off with this big heat wave that has been going on....

We went to the zoo when it was 96 degrees with 88% humidity!  We were totally drenched the whole time it was so hot!  When we got near the end, just before the butterfly exhibit and aquarium, I saw a frozen lemonade stand and boy was that heaven in a cup!  The Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha is the coolest zoo I have even been too! The habitats are seriously amazing, I've never seen anything like it!  It was HUGE and next time I think we are getting a yearly family pass so we can just go and see parts of the zoo on multiple occasions instead of trying to do it all in one day...we were there for hours and still didn't see everything...

 Budgie Encounter at the Henry Doorly Zoo

bring cash, $1 per feeding stick

And of course we took my mom to Nebraska Furniture Mart....that is an attraction on it's own!  It's not just a furniture store, it's a complex of huge buildings with the biggest furniture store, electronics store and clearance stores ever!  We spent quite a bit of time looking at everything, they have all kinds of styles and it doesn't just all look like some typical out of the box furniture, they have everything and all kinds of unique, awesome things in all styles and I found my dream dining table...although it's $10,000 so good thing they have nice things in all price ranges!  It's so exciting to just envision the different possibilities!  I've got my eye on a couple of the dining room sets and bedroom sets.  My mom was such a sweetheart and got us this cute bistro set for our deck as a housewarming gift! I LOVE IT!  We found this at Mrs.B's clearance center, just what we needed out there...it's perfect...

 And of course we did lots of baking and relaxing, she showed me how she makes gluten free bread and I got her hooked on my gluten free dark chocolate covered peanut butter cookies, and we went to Hobby Lobby at least twice, where my mom also picked out this awesome wall clock for us and just our luck all wall decor was 50% off...I freaking love that store.

 Starting to get a little less bare in the dining room....

Greased out from the heat wave...what's the point of putting on makeup, it'll sweat off in 2 minutes!

Her flight got delayed so we got to keep her for an extra night (I couldn't have been  more excited about a flight delay!) so I drove her through downtown on the way back from the airport to see the big bronze pioneer sculptures at First National's Spirit of Nebraska's Wilderness and Pioneer Courage Park

photo credit:Mike Kleveter

and drove through the Old Market just  for a peek...we'll go back and walk around next visit, it was just too hot and after the zoo day we were done with sweating our pants off!

Omaha Old Market

photo courtesy Marriot

old market passageway 

photo courtesy omahanightlife.com

We'll go back at night when the lighted horse drawn carriages are going around on the cobblestone streets.  And to finish it off, we left the kids with Tyler and had a girls dinner out at the Farmhouse Cafe!  The perfect place for potato lovers like us! :) The last 2 nights we stayed up and watched Food Matters and then that extra bonus night we watched Emma What a CUTE funny movie! We loved it! It's been forever since watching a really good movie like that!  I recommend both Food Matters and Emma for your list of things to watch!  I'm still chuckling over some of the dialog in Emma.