First Day of School!

Today marked the first day of the new school year and the excitement in our home was absolutely palpable.

Okay, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration. Other than Alyssa who's in high school, our other kids attend a year-round school which takes periodic breaks throughout the year.

So for David, Bretty and Kekoa, the school year ended on August 10th. They had two weeks off, and now they're heading back to school one grade older. It sort of dulls the end of summer/start of the school year excitement when your summer vacation is only two weeks long.

Nonetheless, we still started the day with the obligatory picture of everyone with their backpacks...



Of course, there is one little girl who was really excited.

Today was Nalani's first day of kindergarten and she just couldn't wait for it to begin...



In typical fashion, this little girl was the first one in line outside her classroom...



Nalani had so much fun on her first day of school that she even drew a picture of herself and her teacher to bring to school tomorrow.

Of course, we must not forget that today was also the first day of school for Alyssa - and she really had a full summer vacation. Okay, maybe it wasn't a real vacation.

Alyssa's sixteen years old and about to enter her junior year. Both Cari and I were working at that age and thus we thought it inappropriate for her to just lay around all summer. So we gave her a choice. She could get a job for the summer and earn a few dollars, or she could choose to "volunteer" at the Nevada Community Foundation a few days a week.

She opted for the latter on one condition.

Alyssa would help out any way we needed at the Community Foundation, but she had to work for someone other than me!

That's one smart young lady.

For the entire summer Alyssa would come to work with me a few days each week to help out with our Philanthropic Services team (completely on the other side of the office from me!). She spent her time updating our files on local charities with the most recent information available. Our staff tells me that she completed the whole project!

In any case, Alyssa was very excited to start her junior year. She attends a technology based magnet school - which is the best school in the district, but unfortunately is a good ways away from our home. Because my schedule is so chaotic (my days never look the same) and Cari has five other kids to attend to in the morning, Alyssa has to take the bus if she wants to go to the magnet school.

A very, very early bus, I might add.

Alyssa made the decision two years ago that she'd rather get up really early in the morning to take the bus to the magnet school than attend the regular high school down the road.

Gotta be impressed with that young lady's priorities.

So here she is waiting for her bus very early this morning...



That lighter part on the right side of the picture is her.

Told ya it was early!

Happy first day of school.

The Long, Long, Long Road Home...

As no doubt many of our friends and family know by now, we have been in Wisconsin to be with family after the tragic passing of our niece, Ellie Zaidel. To see some wonderful pictures of this little girl and to make a contribution in her honor, visit Ellie's Fund.

As our days in Green Bay were coming to an end, we decided that it would be wrong for us to leave the land of the frozen tundra without taking our children to pay homage to the Green Bay Packers.

Or more specifically, the guy who started it all - Curly Lambeau...



But no matter how big ol' Curly is, no one is more important in Packerland than the man for whom the Super Bowl trophy is named, Vince Lombardi...



Of course, our baby girls being the girly girls that they are, the only thing that excited them was the opportunity to pose in front of all the flowers in the courtyard of Lambeau Field...



Note that their big brothers refused to pose in the front of the picture next to the flowers.

We also walked around the building to find two bricks in the wall that were purchased in honor of my wife's maternal and paternal grandparents...



The great irony of the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field is that the tundra never freezes anymore. Heaters are implanted below the field so that the ground never freezes and thus footing is always solid.

I guess there will never be a repeat of the Ice Bowl. As a Cowboy fan, all I can say is "good riddance!"

We also had to make a stop at Pancake Place so we could have the world's greatest breakfast feast at dinner time...



That, my friends, is their famous stuffed hashbrowns. It's a heaping pile of homemade hashbrowns stuffed with cheese and ham, topped with bacon and eggs over easy, all on top of wheat toast.

I think just writing those words has caused my arteries to harden a bit.

We also made a visit to the cabin of Cari's sister's sister-in-law (if that's not confusing enough). It sits upon a little river which presents a beautiful view...



Green Bay itself is cut in half by the Fox River. As a major shipping lane, it's a city in which you can still be stopped so that the bridge can be raised to accomodate boat traffic below...



When's the last time you saw one of those!

We also visited Cari's cousin's house to let our kids play with their kids...

Of course, our oldest daughter Alyssa preferred to spend her time on her mobile phone...

The picture above was covertly taken through a window. She was nervously shaking her leg and smiling at the same time. Clearly, this had to be a conversation with a boy.

I think perhaps she doesn't need a mobile phone after all.

Since we left Las Vegas upon only a few hours notice, we had to fly into Milwaukee and make the drive up to Green Bay. Of course, we then had to reverse all that to go home.

But before we left Milwaukee, Cari and her two sisters insisted that we let our kids visit what was their special place to eat when they were kids themselves.

Welcome to Fuddruckers...

Home of the 12 pound hamburger.

Okay, maybe that's a bit of hyperbole, but boy, those are big burgers.

It certainly was hard for us to leave during such a difficult time for everyone, but my lovely wife Cari managed a final smile with her sisters before we headed to the airport...

Unfortunately, the trip home was as miserable a flight experience as we have ever undergone.

To begin, Midwest Airlines delayed us substantially in Milwaukee and ultimately had us switch planes for the non-stop flight home to Las Vegas.

To make matters every more entertaining, we then found out that a thunderstorm in Utah meant that our plane would have to fly a longer route into Las Vegas. Of course, this being our lucky day, the Captain announced that we needed more fuel and would have to land briefly in Omaha, Nebraska.

He promised, however, that we would only be about 20 minutes on the ground and then we'd be quickly on our way.

Naturally, it couldn't be that simple.

I've flown all over the world, and that landing in Omaha was as hard and abrupt a landing as I have ever endured. And indeed, as they were refueling the plane for us on the runway, the Captain then announced that the landing gear was damaged and they would need to check it.

And oh, by the way, everyone would have to get off the plane because they technicians needed to run the engines to test the landing gear.

Did I mention that it was 2 a.m. by this time?

Ever try to wake up a bunch of sleepy children and get them off a plane? Not an easy task since we are only two parents and cannot carry six children simultaneously.

Incidentally, that just proves my point that the biggest transition for parents (aside having your first child) is when you go from two to three kids. At that moment, for the very first time, the parents are outnumbered.

Anyway, the Omaha airport at 2 a.m. is pretty much closed. And although the airport is a bit larger and there are places to eat and such right outside the airport, we couldn't get to them.

The Transportation Safety Administration - those guys who screen your carry-on luggage - well, they've all gone home by 2 a.m. So we were told that if we left the immediate gate area, we would have to catch a flight the next morning because nobody could screen us.

And while staying overnight didn't seem all that bad by this point, we were also told that if ANYONE left the terminal, the entire plane would be grounded. Apparently there is a rash of terrorists who ride planes across the nation just waiting for the moment their flight will be rerouted to Omaha so they can jump off the plane and launch their insidious plot.

Well, we didn't want to screw it up for everyone else, so in the terminal we remained...

And since nobody could leave, all we had was the serving carts they took off the plane. We had enough Diet Pepsi and chewy granola bars to last a lifetime...

Finally, they announced that the landing gear was fixed and we were ready to go. We were to begin boarding in just a few minutes.

Oops, they spoke too soon.

During the repairs to the landing gear, they apparently ran the engines for a good while. And thus while our plane had been refueled a few hours before, there was no longer enough on board to get us safely to Las Vegas.

And this now being close to 5 a.m., the guy who drives the fuel truck in Omaha had gone home.

So we had to wait until someone woke him up and dragged him back to the airport to fuel us up!

The crazy part? I had been gone so long that things had been backing up at the office. So it was only a few days prior during a conference call that I accepted a meeting for the very morning I was to return to Las Vegas. Someone was literally flying into town for one day only to see me. I'm not sure how coherent I was for that meeting!

As trying as the whole episode was for our family, we had to laugh at it throughout. We sat on the floor in some strange airport and ate cookies and told crazy stories.

And at least one of our little girls proved just how resilient kids can be...

Don't you wish you could sleep that soundly?!