Day 11 - Day 14: Omaha, NE

So happy to be together again!

"Three Dog Night" - Tom Findley

We are leaving Nebraska today and on our way to St. Louis, MO. We got in late Tuesday evening to Mike and Emma’s beautiful house in Omaha and stayed till Friday morning. It was a fun few days with them. We finally got to meet Auggie in person, he is the sweetest little baby, such a good boy. Toby was reunited with Bear and Silver too, I think we were more excited to see them than he was though. Mike and Emma have a beautiful house with a lovely backyard. Perfect for their growing family! 

Meet Auggie! He can feed himself and doesn't mind naps face down on the floor. He also has sharp fingernails and went ahead and scratched up his face before we could snag a photo of him! Still cute though.

Right now Nebraska is full of color, and Mike and Emma’s house has some big trees showing off their fall beauty. We sat outside for a bit and enjoyed the nice weather and fall colors. We had one really nice day and one much colder day while we were here. Kyle was in heaven in the basement where Mike has all his guitars and amps! They jammed for a bit and then later Mike and Emma took us to a fall festival nearby called Vala’s Pumpkin Patch and Apple Orchard. It’s like the Disneyland of fall! I was in heaven. They have the largest pumpkin patch I’ve ever seen, as well as an apple orchard and sun flower fields. We walked around most of the park, took a ride out to the pumpkin patch and marveled at the thousands of pumpkins in all shapes, colors and sizes they grow! We also went apple picking and collected fresh apples for Emma’s apple crisp later. There was so much to see at Vala’s but it was getting cold so we wrapped it up after the apple orchard. 

Ok here is the map to Vala's! I told you its like Disneyland!! Vala’s Pumpkin Patch has over 400-acres of farmland and attractions. This place was HUGE and so worth it.

This display pleases the inner OCD in all of us!

Not sure what this plant is but its pretty!

Mums galore!

This wasn't even a quarter of the amount of pumpkins they had! Their pumpkin patch grows 30 varieties and goes on for 55 acres!

Waiting for the tractor to take us out to the orchard.

Trying not to freeze while we picked apples. Most of the trees only had apples left near the top so Kyle did most of the picking!

Later that evening they took us to a brewery called Empyrean where we got a flight of 12 beers! They had an Oktoberfest that was delicious, but I went with a glass of their “Dark Sky” vanilla porter and let Kyle finish the flight. Auggie, who happily came with us everywhere, was such a trooper. He is a very curious baby and didn’t mind us strangers holding him and playing with him. Thank goodness because nothing was going to stop us from picking that happy baby up! 

I love a good grocery store and Nebraska has one of the queens of the grocery world called HyVee. I remember going to it last time we drove through Nebraska and spent a good hour or more in the store just exploring. Emma shares my love of nice grocery stores and took me to one of the bigger HuVee’s by them. I again was in heaven and loaded up! We picked up Kyle after and she took us out to a cute town called Ashland nearby. The Main Street was adorable and decorated for Halloween. They had a stationery store that we had to stop into. It was a dream! So many fun things, I bought a shirt that says “Protect the United States Postal Service.” The store owner said they had a local designer design the shirts and they screen printed them there in the store then sold them with a book of stamps as a part of a campaign to help the USPS! Such a wonderful idea, she said they sold enough to give the post office down the street $2000! Most everyone reading this blog knows my love of mail and the post office so it really touched me that they supported them like that. After we got flights of cider and wine across the street at Glacial Till cider house/winery. They had a large room in the back with couches and it was perfect for us. It was just us and one other group so we had room to spread out and allow Auggie to play while we tasted. Their ciders were really good, we ended up buying some to bring home. 

Filling up the RV at HyVee. We only paid $0.16 because we used Emma's gas rewards!

Emma made the family famous “soccer casserole” for dinner and we stayed in and played some catan after Auggie went to bed on the last night. It was so much fun laughing with them again and enjoying each others company. It has been really nice to catch up with old friends on this journey across the states. We are really thankful for the Woodall’s and all that they have done for us over the years. It was very sad leaving but thankfully NE to VA is closer than NE to CA (kinda)! I can’t believe we have driven over 2,000 miles already. After breakfast this morning Kyle went and picked up a grease gun to lube up the bearings on the car dolly, as recommended by the dealer. We weren’t on the road to St. Louis until the late (late) morning but thats ok, the more time we got to spend with friends the better!