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!

Who Is That??

Last week was VBS and the boys had a fabulous time (as always!). I signed Emilia up and she was all excited to go! Oh, if only you could have seen her on the first day. She popped out of bed, put on her favorite outfit of the day and said, "They'll love this outfit!"

And then she added the accessories, as only Emilia can do: multi-color flowered high-top shoes worn with Santa Clause socks and fishnet fingerless gloves, one turquoise, one hot pink. The multi-stripe handbag pulled the whole outfit together.

She was soooo excited!




And then I found out she wasn't really old enough.

Thank goodness my cousin Emily was working on the administrative end of things and volunteered to have Emilia in her "class." So everyday I packed up a little bag of crafts and goodies for Emilia to do in her "class." Although it wasn't really what Emilia was wanting, it worked out pretty well and I'd say overall she had a good time. One day when I picked her up, Emily told me that Emilia had been pretty grouchy. I asked Emilia about it. She was busily painting in her paint-with-water book and without looking up and in a nonchalant way she said, "Yeah...well...it happens." She is wise beyond her years.

One day I sent a pair of goofy glasses in Emilia's "craft bag." From the sounds of it she had a great time wearing them around the church and I know they've been a huge hit around our house! I meant to post these pics on Friday for my "this moment" but that moment got away from me and I never found the time. So here they are now!

Done

Well, guys, they did it! The Braves won the championship!

In a fantastic come-from-behind win, the Braves finished the tournament undefeated and became the 6 & under t-ball champs in Knoxville.

This is big time! :)

Seriously, though, I'm really very proud of Micah. God blessed him with such a fabulous attitude and spirit that all of the things that bugged me about this season went right over his head and he was able to just enjoy playing the game (and turning pirouettes in the outfield...and throwing dirt...and rubbing said dirt on his white uniform shirt). And I've thanked God more times than I can count that Micah was on this team and not Josiah or there would have been more issues because Josiah has a VERY different attitude. Josiah, in fact, has been giving Micah pep talks before the games with several comments thrown in about winning. All that just rolled off Micah, though because after winning last night, he was happy they had won, but he was also happy that it's over because he's ready to move on to swimming for awhile. Yay for summertime!

Since there's nothing like a few pictures to commemorate an event:
Micah with his championship medal (and still playing in the dirt)


The team posing under the scoreboard
Micah is in the front row, far right...and the score was 23-31