First Week in September 2010

Monday was a holiday off, yeah! Last Monday holiday I had to work. It wasn't just any holiday it was also Kimee's 15th birthday, so the whole days was hers. First trip was to the pedestrian bridge over the Platte River. We drove to the south end of the trail and walked across to the north. When I left the house I checked the National Weather Service site and they said there wasn't a significant chance of rain, of course when we got as far away from the car(s) as we were going to get ... lightening!

Sunny skies on the south end of the bridge...


...and at the north end? Stormy skies.


Erin says "why didn't you tell me not to wear jeans?" Maggie says "leave your cell phone on the shore." The water was cool and surprisingly fast.


Kamber thinks it's funny when I fall on my butt.


Don't be scared Kamber the storm won't get you, I know this because it didn't.


Eventually we made our way back to the cars and lunch, then we got a visitor ... Kasee wants a pony, but didn't want to pet this horse. One thing is for sure, she (the horse) knew what baby carrots were.

You can see the rest of my pictures from the adventure here. Here is my reimagined story of the trip:

After a trip of several days via caravan, then several tens of miles of walking through trecherous terrain, we arrived at our destination. CJ could barely stand from some sort of virus he had picked up from the natives, and Kasee was still bleeding profusely from the arrow she had taken in the ankle. Still, it was a beautiful day as we began to cross the river, when a sudden storm came up and nearly blew us of the rickety bridge. We somehow crawled to the end of the bridge and took little shelter under a ledge. As quick as the storm came up, it went away and we wandered along the dry riverbed looking for Inca gold and stupid boys and their ATVs. We didn't notice the river had swollen until it nearly carried us away, Erin's expensive clothes were all but ruined, and our native guide and equipment manager, Maggie McGravy nearly lost all of our expensive equipment. Fortunately, we all survived. On the way back we had to navigate through piles of dead bodies until a magical girl on a unicorn transported us back to the camp and fed us lunch.

Here is Maggie's reimagined story of the trip:

ok.. here comes the story of a lifetime!
it was kimees 15th birthday so we decided to take an ADVENTURE! after we loaded our life saving equipment into the vehicles, we started our journey. once we arrived at the Platte we hiked a long and tedious trail to the bridge. when we got to the bridge the clouds started to look quite peculiar. in the distance we saw massive flashes on lightening and the thunder was so loud the bridge shook! we managed to cross over without losing anyone over the side. but all of a sudden cj got horrible stomach pains! we thought we were going to have to call the life flight people to come take him away. we were lucky to have shannon with us because she used her magical nursing powers to heal cj. while cj was being cured me kim erin kamber kasee and eric had to take shelter under the bridge to keep away from the weather. the winds got as high as 170mph, which started to create huge waves on the river! we were all scared for our lives!!! BUT out of nowhere the winds started going down and the clouds started to float away and out came Gods Fingers shinning down on us :) we were all enlightened by the sight. then shannon and cj came back good as new. since the weather was now cooperating we went onto the sand bars. we were all laughing and having a great time when all of a sudden me kim and erin were walking across, what we thought was shallow water, and erin and i were sucked in by a massive whirlpool! everyone else was frantic with fear, looking for their hopelessly lost amazing friends. but then out of now were erin and i were spewed out of the water and safely on the sand. everyone cheered with joy! but what everyone didnt know was tht i had my brand new ipad in my purse. when i landed i jumped up as quick as i could to make sure my precious technology was ok which it was, im thanking the God Fingers for tht one :) then after we had enough water fun we started to head back to the car. it was very uncomfortable for me and erin because our clothes were all wet so erin rolled down the bridge to dry off..fail on her part! BUT i felt some pain and to my astonishment i had a flesh eating disease eating away at my legs (which went away when we got back home)! and to top it all off kimee had a pounding headache. we were almost back to the car when shannon and eric noticed a disgusting cluster of maggots across the road. they looked around to see where the maggots were coming from and they found a dead body! no one knew wat to do! but we decided to leave it as is and continue on with our merry way. then when we were back at the car we were eating our delicious lunches and we were interrupted by a local girl riding her horse..bareback. we chatted with the girl and her horse. but after she left she came back with what seemed to be her mother and her horse. we said hello again and surprisingly they trotted on by and flew away on their horses into the sky. then after experiencing our wild day of adventures we decided to head home, and we all lived happily ever after!

what a fun day tht was :)

Kamber too has a reimagined version:

So it was Kim's fifteenth birthday and boy what a day it was. It seemed like alovely day so we decided to take a trip down top the Platte River. The skies were clear, the birds were chirpping, and there was a gentle breeze. We drove in two seperate cars. Maggie, Kim, Eric, and I were all in one car while Shannon, Kamber, CJ, And Kasee were all in another.
When we were turning into the state park, there was a street sign that said Kimberly st. While we all knew it was spelled wrong, there was nothing we could do about it (without a Sharpie anyway). We walked al the way over the river and through the woods to the river. We got there when all of a sudden there way hurricane type weather blew in from out of nowhere. Now this was very odd because, if you did not already know we live in the middle of the USA, nowhere near a flipping ocean.
Lightning and 200 mile an hour winds were present. Still being the smart people that we are, we went out in the river. Quicksand is everywhere when you are at the Platte, so we almost sunk completely under at least a hundred times.
Kim, Maggie, and I also decided that we should see how far out into the river we could get, when all of a sudden giant electric eels came out of thin air and tried to make Maggie and I drown. For some unkown reason, they let us go although one of them had Maggie's phone in it's mouth. I wrestled around with the this eel to get her phone because she had just received a very important text from Jason asking her to be his disney princess. Naturally, she said yes after I retrieved her phone so we had to head back so she could marry Jason.
After we went over the bridge and through the woods, we found this mysterious trail of maggots. Again, using our brains, we followed the trail, where we found a rotten, half-eaten corpse. It was too far disfigured to tell how long the person had been dead, but Kim refused to call the police because well... she's just mean like that.
Eventually we had to stop to eat lunch, and while we were setting up a white horse came running by. Kim jumped up on it's back and rode away into the sunset where hse met her prince charming, who happened to be named Westley.

When we got back to the house Shannon, me, Kamber, and Kasee tried to nap together on the couch. Four bodies, one small space. Yeah, that didn't work for sleep. Later on it was time for Kimee's birthday dinner, she picked Runza. The dinner was exactly what I expect from Runza. After we ate, we went out into the playland.

It was the first chilly night since the start of the summer, and some people can wear shirts as dresses.


Rachel got all artsy on us.


Ally went zooming down the slide at 88 mph.


A picture even Shannon can't complain about.


The birthday girl gives her smiling approval to the days events.

When we got back to the house, we put in Princess Bride and watched it. I got the rest of the pictures here.

Tuesday was supposed to the first Thriller Dance practice, but I got stuck in front of the computer for my third and final Fantasy Football draft. For the third time out of three I had major computer issues that caused part of my draft to be automated, so I didn't end up getting exactly the players I wanted. Also I drafted last in two leagues. I've played in six leagues over four years and I'm even money, considering the tremendous amount of entertainment I get out of it, that's a bargain.

Wednesday was a dull day and I stayed home, but Thursday was a bonus dance courtesy of the Creighton Swing Society.

I figure the top of Katie's head is about 7'10" or so in this picture.


Everyone in the group did a jump pose, sans me, and timing wasn't perfect.

I only took about 30 pictures, you can find them here. Friday was also a dance night, and then on Saturday, two more dances. The first one was a dance / street festival at First United Methodist Church, which, unfortunately for them, coincided with the first Husker game of the season.

It wasn't just swing dancing going on. You've seen this group on my pictures before.


We did dance... Photo credit: Matt



...but there was plenty of goofing off to go around... Bottom left photo credit: Matt


...including fun with perspective.

You can see all of my pictures here and Matt has a collection too, they are here. After I left there, I went home, and then over to another neighborhood dance that I had been invited to by Lindsay. There weren't a whole lot of pictures taken due to declining light, but there are a couple super cute ones in here. After we left there, Merinda, Nate, and I ate at Goldberg's. I then went over to Shannon's and hung out for a while, then home.

Sunday was the Bears first game and let's just say that it was a victory, but not a satisfying one. I was a little wound up at the Bears coach for not kicking that field goal, if he had, the "drop" in the endzone would not have been an issue later, because it would not have affected the outcome of the game.

The only other thing that happened was a late night Mass Chaos on campus at Creighton University.

Next week is Cowtown Jamborama, I'm sure it will take forever to get my pictures up ... since I'll be in Chicago all week.