float on | niobrara

i got to fulfill one of my 23 before 24 goals! hurray! 

jake, a few friends, and i were able to head down the niobrara river in the middle of july.

it was a long drive to get to valentine, nebraska. fortunately, we had enough episodes of the vampire diaries to get us there. coming back we weren't so lucky. 

it was definitely an experience. a six hour long experience!
by the end we were already planning our trip for next year.

// our neighbors for the weekend.

// the niobrara

// the men pulling us back on to the river after a lunch break

// just floating along.

// soaking up sun

// the sky started changing by the end of our trip. we barely missed the storm.

//the end of our trip we were met with knee-high mud!

we enjoyed every bit of the niobrara. 

what experience have you had that needs to be experienced more than once?

because for me, this was one of them. 

hannah

warrior dash

1. random guy after running

2. some of the crazy outfits seen that day

3. jake and travis after running

4. i made it back just in time to take a picture

5. handsome guy that i date

what a whirlwind of a weekend! it seems as if most of it was sucked up by this thing called warrior dash. apparently 20,000 people signed up to run a 5k obstacle course. including jake and a few of his friends. had i known that i was going to get just as dirty standing and waiting and walking, i would have signed up to run!

oh, remember how i thought i was going to be able to take fun pictures of jake falling and making weird faces? i failed...miserably. before he and his friends ran the course they told me that the best times were around 50 minutes. me with my wonderful time management skills thought to myself, "they are definitely not finishing in 50 minutes. maybe in 90 minutes." so i trekked back to the car thinking i had loads of time. stopped by the gas station to fill the car up with gas. picked up some electrolyte filled beverages for the exhausted competitors. parked the car closer to the entrance. and on my way back i get a phone call saying that jake is waiting for me. way to go me. i missed everything. at least i was able to capture a few pictures, right? just not as great of pictures as i thought i was going to capture. i am proud of them for finishing the course in 50-some minutes. obviously was not expecting that. pretty impressed, guys. :)

next challenge? mud factor.

hannah

shenanigans

pictures from last weekend, when we had nothing better to do. 

or we did and we just didn't do them.

1 & 2 - spelling our names during slow shutter.

3 - view from the roof. you can see our phallic capital and twinkling stars.

4 - figuring out how to get down....

you're in luck.

BONUS PICTURE: jake hurting himself jumping off the roof. priceless.

(is it bad that i laugh at this? i think it's just his facial expression...)

good thing travis didn't take a picture of me trying to get down. pretty sure that would have been even more amusing as it involved me freaking out about standing on jake's shoulders.

confession: i'm afraid of heights. 

probably because i'm always pretty close to the ground being only 5'1".

anyway.

hoping to post some pictures from prairie hill next week.

jake and his friends are competing in the warrior dash tomorrow. it should be entertaining.

maybe i'll get to capture pictures like the one above? 

hope you all have a great weekend!

hannah

gone fishing.

 

on friday night, jake, his sister ashley, his nephew brock, and i ventured to one of our local lakes to catch a million dollar fish. {apparently cabella's tagged some fish, each tagged fish worth a prize, and threw them in a lake.} the only fish caught was the one by brock! lousy bunch of fisher-people we are. it was such a crazy windy night, we decided not to stay too long but just long enough to watch a beautiful sunset. one thing nebraska is good for are the sunsets. 

any tips for catching fish? we really want to catch the $1,000,000 one! ;)

hannah

nebraska adventures

first off, i hope everyone had a great fourth of july weekend! my fourth of july weekend was filled with activities; the most memorable one i'll share with you!

i never thought i would have the opportunity to say that i went to a tractor pull. honestly, i'm kind of ashamed that i can say that. i didn't know what i was getting myself into when i agreed to go because i had never heard of such a thing before. so for FOUR HOURS of my life i sat watching tractors pulling weights  to see how far they could go. FOUR HOURS of my life that i will never get back. but hey, at least i can say i've been to a tractor pull, right? 

pictures 1 & 2 :: the tractor that leveled the dirt for the tractors

pictures 3 & 4 :: farmer's foreplay tractor (see all that smoke?)

picture 5 :: britt and i in our boredom with our windblown hair

don't visit nebraska for the beach

this is not what the beach looked like... at all.

in my last post i briefly mentioned my excitement to head out to the beach. well my excitement ended as soon as we pulled up, where it was then replaced with deep disappointment. the place had sand and water, but there were only three people there, us! i didn't even consider pulling out the camera to take a few shots because it would have been depressing to even look at; the afore said water was sketchy with green algae stuff floating around in it, worse than a typical lake. we stayed for maybe an hour watching fish jump out of the water pretty consistently, getting covered in sand which we couldn't wash off in the lake, and remaining stationary because the sand was too hot to even walk on. now i wish i would have taken pictures just so you all wouldn't think i was over exaggerating! i assure you i am not. after leaving the beach, meredith mentioned mahoney park and we took the idea and ran with it.

mahoney was only a 10 minute drive from where we already were and after building it up for tim, who has never been there, we were all excited once again. it's always great when a trip isn't wasted on something lousy. the day did a complete 180 at that point and we had a great time. if you've never been to mahoney state park, they have a relatively amazing swim park with a wave pool, a few good slides, and a whole kiddie pool. we were primarily in the wave pool. i say relatively because it's the best place near the proximity of lincoln and if you live in a bigger city, or state, then i'm sure there are parks that surpass mahoney. we left the park happy and bronze. a great day in all.

meredith left on sunday to go to killington music festival for SIX weeks. i'm going to miss her! i'm looking forward to our trip to montana in august!

after the farmer's market
tim also leaves in two weeks! 

whats on the plate for this week?

• jazz in june tomorrow with friends
• grill out at jake's sister's on wednesday
• babysitting cute little ali on thursday night
• CUBS GAME in kc on friday

what are you all up to this week? anything exciting?