Family Gathering and a Birthday Celebration

One of the primary reasons we traveled to Omaha Nebraska in the middle of May will be revealed in the next post after this one.  There was a second reason to make the trip, one that unfortunately indicates that I’m really an old timer…

All were gathered and focused on the center of attention on our first evening in Omaha… From the left in this photo are Shelby, Shelby’s daughter Rachel, David III and his mom Amy.  Shelby is Amy’s sister and Rachel is Shelby’s daughter.

So what was everyone looking at?

Ahhhh…it was our son, David II opening a belated birthday present as we all celebrated his birthday, which was actually in April.  As you can see, he had a little help from Myla, who is Rachel’s oldest daughter.  Rachel’s son Adrian was much more interested in the bag on the floor!

David II collects toy soldiers and this one was mounted on a horse…so it was a bit special.  Both Myla and her sister Salma seemed intrigued or at least curious about this gift…

One could say that the toy soldier was more than belated.  Laurie and I had purchased this one and another in St. Charles Missouri before the Christmas of 2017…with the intent of giving them to him for his birthday in 2018.  We’d put them in a closet at home and totally forgot we’d bought them! (Old people!)

We also gave David II some family art work…3 little primitive paintings by his grandmother and this exquisite framed pencil drawing that was created by my brother Bob.  It seems that family art work is David II’s favorite gift…

Did I mention that this was our son’s fiftieth (50^th) birthday!  It does make me feel quite ancient…

…a few more family photos.  This is Myla sitting with her great aunt Amy.  She is a cute little girl, that’s for sure.

Then there is this photo of great uncle David II and great aunt Amy sitting with Salma.  Salma is not only cute, but she’s full of energy too!

David III’s girlfriend Ryanna stopped by and Laurie took this photo of Ryanna and Uncle David holding little Adrian.  Adrian is such a cheerful fuss free little boy!  Our grandson David III seems pretty comfortable with babies.  It must be a generational thing as I was never too sure of myself with a baby…

FYI…look at David III’s long legs.  Our ‘little’ 18 year old grandson has now grown to tower over us at 6’5”!

Well heck, with this big crowd when it was time to eat the best thing to do was to go out and get some pizza.  Laurie and I have never had Marco’s Pizza.  It was raining so I stayed in the car while my son fetched our dinner.

The first pizza shown above is a cheese pizza.  Grandson Emmett Lee prefers cheese pizza so it’s a ‘must’ whenever the family serves up this favorite take-out food.  The second pizza is the one that my better half and I usually order…sausage and pepperoni.

This is an order of “Cheezybread”, fresh-baked bread with 3 cheeses and garlic sauce.  It comes with 2 dipping sauces on the side, Marco’s original pizza sauce and a ranch dipping sauce. 

This creation is called a Meatball Bake.  It consists of meatballs and Italian sausage baked with Marco’s pizza sauce and their signature 3-cheeses.  The meatballs were pretty good…

In our opinion Marco’s serves better pizza than most of the big chain operations.  However we‘ll stick with local operations that serve tastier pizza, even if they are sometimes a bit more expensive.  Of course pizza is a truly a matter of taste or what you’re used to and Marco’s must be doing something right… After all, they have over 800 franchised locations across the USA and they’ve been in business since 1978.

This specific Marco’s location is at 1904 North 168^th Street in Omaha Nebraska.  Phone: 402-289-9922.  The Company’s website is at: https://www.marcos.com/.

 One of Amy’s hobbies…or passions…is photography.  Plus, from my standpoint, the price is right!  So we went for a drive, found a local dirt road that wasn’t flooded and she took a bunch of pictures of Laurie and yours truly… I liked this one but Laurie wasn’t so sure.

Then was off to a little local park where we posed on this bench.  We both think that this is a ‘cute’ photo of us old folks.  Good job Amy!

Laurie didn’t like the photos with our sunglasses on…but I liked this one with us and David II.  Laurie and I look like a ‘Men in Black’ movie ad.  David II has gotten so slim it’s hard to believe that we’re related! (Good job son…)

That’s it for now… Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them.

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave