Iowa 2011 - Day 4

How did I ever let the last day recap end without putting a picture of the sunset on here? My grandparents live on a lake in Iowa and for as long as I can remember I have loved watching the sun set on the other side of the lake. It's so beautiful. Here is the sunset from our 3rd day:





The next morning we went to the fish hatchery.


The boys were most impressed with the albino catfish,



but Emilia was quite taken with the turtles. She stood up on the rail and watched them most of the time we were in there! She even had them all named. There was the momma turtle, the baby turtle and the daddy turtle.


Here she is holding her baby up so she can see the turtles, and I quote, "Look, baby. Look at the turtles. Do you see the turtles?"

This is my fantastic grandpa, playing along and pointing something out to the baby.


She was particularly excited when the momma turtle gave the baby turtle a piggy back ride!


Audra just had fun being cute :)


After hanging out with the big fish for awhile, we went to see all of the tiny, hatched fish. There were a LOT of them! The kids were all very impressed by how many little fish they had to be put in the lakes.




On the way home from the fish hatchery, we stopped at the store to get some night crawlers for fishing. I'm not much for fishing...too much patience required for that! But the kids and John had fun out there, even if they didn't catch any fish. I'm actually not sure if Emilia had more fun fishing or playing with the night crawlers, but either way, I know she had fun. :)








And then, that night--that's when it happened. The moment the kids had been counting down to the whole time. The moment we'd all been waiting for:

THE COUSINS ARRIVED!!!

Audra though Preston and Grammie (my Aunt Pam, but all the kids called her Grammie) were worth checking out. Turns out they're pretty fun to play with!


Poor Grandpa had so many more people from whom to defend himself



Emilia LOVED having GIRLS to play with! She latched on to Rylee almost immediately and wasn't far from her side for the rest of the time.


Audra enjoyed my cousins' girls, too. :)


That night Emily and Grammie took the kids to the park. We wish YOU had been there, too!







Grammie led all the kids in an obstacle course!


Time to calm down! Hanging out with Grandpa and cousins before bed.




What a wonderful day that was. So much fun. So much laughter. So much excitement. So much love. It just doesn't get much better than that. <3

Iowa 2011 - Day 3

Sorry for that longish hiatus...I've been attempting to plan for our upcoming school year and I've been bogged down by all of the choices!

My girls love to color. You should see all of the BEAUTIFUL artwork they create for me. (Really, you should. Send me your address...I'm all about sharing!) :) Almost every day that we were in Iowa one or more of my kids colored a picture or two or ten for my grandma.



I'm sure she kept them all. ;)

Later that morning, the girls went out shopping. And would you know I got the FRONT DOOR SPOT at the Emporium BOTH times we stopped there? (Yes, we went back to the first place we stopped at the end of our shopping. Ha! Makes me think of the first--and last--time my dad took me shopping. Seems I haven't changed too much.) Well, the girls had a great time out and about and it would seem the boys had a great time at home without us as this is what we found when we got back:




And here's little miss sassy pants and her new necklace...she picked it out herself and of course it's purple, her favorite color. Much to her dismay, mommy wouldn't buy her the hot pink, sequinned, heart cut out shoes. They were cute...they were also expensive!


After lunch we had some more time just foolin around. John fixed grandma's computer and the kids typed more letters to their cousins. Emily worked on her online class and I edited pictures to print for Grandma and Grandpa's wall.

That evening, however, there was no foolin' around as Grandma and I dominated the card games...AGAIN.

'Cause we're awesome like that. :)

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!