Nebraska Discoveries 12: Lauritzen Gardens…Omaha’s Botanical Center

Since I won’t be in the Omaha area forever, I realized recently that my time is running out for visiting the many attractions in the area.  Thanks to my boys’ field trips, Cub Scouting and birthday party invitations, they’ve already been to several area attractions.  But I’ve set a new goal for myself and the family: to visit every attraction on the Omaha Convention and Visitors Bureau’s “Pin Map”.

You probably can’t see it that well, but just click on the “Pin Map” link above and you can see the original PDF.   It’s called the “Pin Map” because in front of each of these attractions is an enormous mock up of a blue-tipped pin.  I’ll get a picture of one as soon as I can…
So…my goal is to visit each of the 15 attractions on the “Pin Map” before I leave the area.  So far, I’ve covered 7 of the 15 attractions (numbers 3, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12, and 13)…and we have this summer to make our way through the rest.  Maybe I’ll blog about these “pins” as we visit them…I hope to, but I won’t make any guarantees.
Today I’ll share with you my first visit to #8 on the list: Lauritzen Gardens.
Timmy’s preschool class took a trip here on Monday.  I can’t believe I’ve lived here nearly 2 years and hadn’t been here till this week!  I guess it goes with living in a house full of boys, right?
This is a beautiful place, full of pretty flowers (of course) but I also really enjoyed the gardens “repurposing” sconces, corbels and other ornamentals from throughout Omaha…the pieces were rescued and help decorate the gardens.  The kids really enjoyed the flowers but the weather wasn’t very good and the walking was pretty tough on that group of 4 and 5 year olds.
So here are some pictures of the lovely visit.  I won’t include everything, just some of the more summary-type pics.  I STILL can’t believe I left our camera sitting on the counter as we headed out the door…so these pictures are with my iPhone camera.

This piece was repurposed from a downtown Omaha building:

Nebraska Discoveries 10: Snow Geese

For the past 2-3 weeks, it’s been slowly warming here. I wish I had blogged a little more about the extreme bitter cold we experienced here, and the record-after-record-after-record snowfall we had here in the Omaha area since December. I’ll be updating our “Vollmer Weather Curse” post soon with this past winter’s craziness and I … Read more

Nebraska Discoveries 9**: Skiing at Mount Crescent, Iowa

**Yes, I know this is in Iowa, but it’s easily something that someone in Nebraska could do. Today the family took a day trip to Mount Crescent Ski Area in Crescent, Iowa. Dave and I can now proudly add this small mountain to our “I didn’t realize there was skiing there!” locations that includes Mad … Read more

Nebraska Discoveries 8: Spring….FINALLY! Eastern Nebraska Birding 101

Today was a gloriously beautiful day!  I can’t believe I was able to enjoy just about all day outside…I mowed the lawn for the first time this season, worked more on my garden, and planted a couple of containers with annual flowers purchased yesterday from Timmy’s child care center’s fund raiser.  I enlisted Timmy and a … Read more

Nebraska Discoveries 7: Nebraska Popcorn & A Bright Spot in a Gray Day

Today has been gray and rainy all day. Ugh. Dave is in Michigan for a Google Earth conference. I’m jealous. I love Google Earth and would LOVE to learn how to write code for overlaying data! So it’s just the boys and me tonight, so we had a laid-back afternoon/evening. We built Legos, ate macaroni … Read more

Nebraska Discoveries 6: Our Weekend in North Platte

This past weekend we rented a camper from the Air Force base and drove it 280 miles west of here to the town of North Platte, Nebraska. They were holding their annual “Railfest”, this big Union Pacific Railroad/Town of North Platte celebration weekend. The UP sponsors everything, lots of fun for everyone. There’s a festival … Read more