Every time I go to Omaha, I tell myself I’m going to do better at blogging while I’m there. Self, I say, just throw up a photo or two each day and link to the rest of your photos on Flickr. It’s not that hard, you can do it! But somehow I never quite do.

In my defense, we stay pretty busy while we’re here. Okay, it’s not like we’re leaving the house at 7 o’clock every morning and not coming home till bedtime, but we usually have a couple of activities or visits planned for each day. And while I love seeing all my Omaha friends and relatives, I’m actually a total introvert. No, seriously, I am! Quit laughing and listen to my explanation!

When I say I’m an introvert, I don’t mean I’m shy; I mean that after I spend time around people talking and laughing and having fun, I need plenty of quiet time at home to recharge my batteries. And when we’re in Omaha, I just don’t get that because our time here is limited. I have to cram what would normally be a month’s worth of visits into a week or ten days. So I push through and by the time we head home I’m pretty sick of being with people and want to hole up at home for a week, doing nothing more energetic than reading and baking and snuggling on the couch with Troy and Annalie while we watch movies.

What does all that have to do with me being terrible at blogging during our visits to Omaha? Well, by the time I get Annalie to bed in the evenings, all I want to do is stare at the TV for an hour or two and then go to bed and read crap romance novels. I don’t even want to interact with people online, which is why my blog often goes un-updated for days at a time.

And it’s too bad, because I’m usually doing really fun things that are eminently bloggable. Like last weekend, on Friday we picked up a gigantic (and I mean gigantic—it was probably 24″ x 32″) pizza at Orsi’s and took it to my cousin’s house for lunch. My mom and I hung out and visited with JoDee while Annalie played with her four second cousins and two of their cousins whom JoDee happened to be watching that day. You have not been entertained till you’ve watched seven kids, ages 5 and under, race around in various dress-up outfits and play all kinds of wacky games together.

Then on Saturday, I painted pottery with Katrina and Kassie—just the grown-up ladies, as I explained it to Annalie. That was super fun. It was just a happy coincidence that Joe and Kassie were going to be in Omaha the same weekend we were, and when Katrina realized that she arranged for us all to get together, which was great. I love it when people ask me, “When are you free? Do you want to get together?” and then plan everything and just tell me when to show up. (Well, okay, I contributed a bit more to the planning than that. But not much.)

Aside from the very loud group of 4-year-olds attending a birthday party at the pottery shop while we were there (one girl literally smashed a piece of cake into her forehead, which caused several other kids to imitate her, while the oblivious moms chatted away and the long-suffering shop employees strove valiantly to regain control), it was a delightful morning of friends, caffeinated beverages, and dottery. Kassie wrote about the morning in more detail here, and Katrina wrote about it here.

Later that evening we all got together at Katrina and Matt’s house. Their triplets are three of Annalie’s favorite Omaha friends, which means she had a blast running around with them in the backyard while the adults cooked and talked and made margaritas.

Well, most of the adults. Joe was having too much fun playing with the kids. And the kids all had the time of their lives attacking Joe with anything they could throw or shoot.

(Trivia: Josh and Zach are pretty easy to tell apart because Josh is almost always wearing orange, his favorite color. Of course, if Zach decides to wear orange one day when Josh isn’t I’ll be totally messed up.)

Joe got a bit crazed with power at one point and aimed his gun at me and my expensive camera. (Just kidding. He wasn’t really gonna shoot. He was just posing.)

We feasted on chili, hot dogs, fruit, veggies and Aunt Lori’s Dip (a favorite in Joe’s family, concocted with 2 c. cottage cheese, 2 c. mayonnaise, 1 c. sour cream, and 1 packet of Original Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing Mix), and a delicious ice-cream-sandwich cake for dessert. At the end of the day, the adults were so stuffed we could hardly move, and the kids had such disgustingly dirty and grass-stained feet, that we felt pretty confident it was one of the best days ever.

p.s. We fly home tomorrow at the crack of dawn. I’ll blog about the rest of our Omaha trip later.