Iowa 2011 - Day 2

Iowa got a lot of rain while we were there. It rained EVERY. DAY. Thankfully, somedays it did all of the raining at night. Monday was one of those lucky days!

After the rain had cleared out, John and I flipped over the paddle boat and the kids took turns helping daddy exercise paddle around the lake.


The boat was a little lopsided.




While not in the paddleboat, the boys took turns keeping grandma and grandpa company on the dock. And grandma and grandpa got to find out first hand just how chatty my boys are!!




Grandma, I thought about printing this picture for you to put on your wall, but I ended up deciding you'd like the other better. Ha!


I thought this one was cute of my grandpa waving to all of us out on the dock. :)


Back in the house, Emilia and Grandma spent some time talking and coloring. Emilia made MANY beautiful pictures for grandma!


Josiah challenged Grandpa to a game of pool (Micah supervised)



And Audra was more than busy taking care of all of grandma's dolls...and if you've never seen my grandma's house--she has LOTS of dolls to take care of!



So many, in fact, that Emilia eventually had to come help, too. Those two were so cute with the dolls. They would rock them and hug them. And they spent A LOT of time tucking them in. There were dolls tucked in randomly all over grandma and grandpa's house! One time, Emilia even had a line up of three or four dolls tucked in on one chair. Those dolls got so much lovin' they're probably glad to have some peace again. ;)


All that baby care really wore Audra out, though and before long she was taking a nap of her own. Awww....sleeping babies are just so precious!


Later that evening the older kids were up to their usual shenanigans and Audra got some playtime of her own with grandma and grandpa. As the youngest of four, you know she loved that!!


Audra decided that this was HER chair, who knows why...


...but this is what she did when grandpa would try to sit in it! She'd stop whatever she was playing and run across the room and flop herself like this so he couldn't sit. It was really cute and of course grandpa did it every 30 seconds or so just to give her a hard time :)


And then some good, old-fashioned 'foolin' around' with grandma. The day isn't complete without some of that!

Iowa 2011 - Day 1

What better way to start a vacation in Iowa than with Sunday morning church at Camp Okoboji? None, I tell you. None.

I could have done without the running out of gas on the way home from church, but John didn't ask my opinion about that. :)

All the girls stayed with the car to keep it safe while all the boys went to get some gas so we could make it home. Grandma even crawled into the backseat during our wait to keep Miss Emilia company. We had a good time chatting and laughing while watching for the red car to come back down the road and rescue us.




The rest of the day was spent "just foolin' around," as I always used to say to my Grandma. Emilia and Grandma spent quite a bit of time putting together puzzles on the floor



Josiah and Grandpa got into some mischief in the basement before Josiah found the typewriter. The kids loved the typewriter!! All of them, even little Audra, took turns over the next 3 days "writing letters" on it. This old-fashioned, out of date machine was the source of HOURS of entertainment!




The weather outside was nice that afternoon so we squeezed in some time on the porch before the rain came in. Audra showed grandma how she already knows what to do with a phone...she's quite adorable with it, if I do say so myself. (And I'm not biased at all)



Emily was quite happy with the outdoor time:



It's a good thing we came in when we did, though, because there was a holdup going on downstairs!




Somehow, someone mediated the situation because everyone got out unharmed. And thank goodness for that because a trip to the hospital was definitely not on my list of things to do in Iowa.

Iowa 2011 - The Car Ride There

**Our family trip to Iowa was actually last week, but I never took the time to sit down and blog about it, so I'll be making up for it this week so you can all share in the fun we had while we were there!**

It takes a long time to get to Iowa from Tennessee. Sixteen hours, just of driving. That doesn't include gas stops, lunch stops, potty stops, "I just thought I had to pee" stops.

Sixteen hours is a loooong time to be in a car with four small children.

THANKFULLY, I have four wonderful children who were VERY well behaved during the car trip. That's not to say they didn't have the occasional disagreement and "she's got her hand on my carseat" squabbles, but that only happened a handful of times on any given day. And can I just say how thankful I am for car DVD players and Nintendo DSs?? VERY.

The first night of our vacation we stopped in Normal, IL and had fun laughing about the name of the town. Josiah was up to other things. This is the sign he made in the car during the drive:


And this is the note he passed to Emily in the car:


The note, part 2:


That Josiah, he so crazy!! :)

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The only other notable part of the drive was the stop in Blue Earth for blizzards (or other DQ treat of choice). And of course we had to take pictures with the Jolly Green Giant!

**side story: When we first pulled in the parking lot, Josiah looked at the Jolly Green Giant statue and said, "Hey look--Peter Pan!" Emily and I had a good laugh about that one**











Everyone is up there standing under the Jolly Green Giant in that last picture...it's just hard to see them because I had to be back so far to get all of the giant in the picture!