Family...

 The best part of our trip to Nebraska, was getting to spend time with Joe's family.  Frank still lives in the same house that Joe lived in for most of his growing up years.  Joe's sister, Cathy, and her daughter Andrea, live in the same town as well.  Andrea has two kids that are just about the perfect ages for Alex to play with.  He loved playing with his cousins!!  We spent much of our trip sitting in Cathy's front yard, catching up, and watching the kids play.  One of the days, after a big rain shower, the kids ran to the church parking lot next door and stomped through all the big puddles!

 The kids became fast friends and had fun running around the yard together, eating popsicles, playing basketball, and watching movies.  It was so fun to watch them together, and it gave the grown ups time to talk and catch up as well.
 

 Alex got to spend some special time with Grandpa too.  We went garage sale-ing, made trips to Walmart in Scottsbluff, looked at old pictures, explored Grandpa's house, took a driving tour of Mitchell where Joe and Frank pointed out how the town has changed, and took the metal detector out.  Alex was so interested in Grandpa's metal detector, so they took it out to the fair grounds to see if they could find any treasure.  They found lots of washers, a few coins, and Grandpa found some cool spurs.

 Frank also came with us to Urgent Care to get Alex's arm x-rayed after he and his cousin fell of the back patio deck.  Luckily he just had a strained elbow!  Alex and his grandpa had some special time together when we went to the cemetery to visit the grave site where Grandma Vargas and Grandma Calvillo are buried.  Frank took Alex around and showed him all of the family graves as well as his neighbors who had passed away.  As Frank led Alex by the hand through the cemetery, I couldn't help but think that it was an unlikely place, for a really beautiful memory.