We took off for our Iowa trip the day after school got out, so this was our first "regular" week of summer. Not so regular, though, because Andrew and Daniel both went to Camp Invention every day from 8:30-3:00, Daniel had swim team every evening, and Emily had Girls' camp for church from Wednesday-Saturday. Daniel even had his first swim meet!
You would think it would have been quiet around here on Thursday and Friday, because it was just Jonny and Nathaniel at home. Nope! Jonny talks non. stop.!!!!! They were in a pretty intense Candyland battle on Thursday, lol!
Daniel at his first swim meet
Camp Invention
They spent a lot of time taking recycled items and making cool stuff. They had a great time!
She's finally home from Girls' Camp! Nathaniel said, “Emily,
I have to give you a hug, because we finally have another girl in the house and
not just all these boys!!!”
She didn't get enough sleep, but she had a great time! I would actually call it "glamping" instead of camping, if you compare it to what we did when I was her age, but whatever.
We are so glad we got to go to Iowa last month!! We stayed at my Uncle Sam and Aunt Linda's house, and the kids had so much fun on the farm!!
Here are some pictures of our adventures:
Saturday: On the airplane from Phoenix to Minneapolis Nathaniel and Emily had both been on a plane in 2005 (I was actually a week away from giving birth to Andrew so technically he rode the airplane, too!), but this was the first plane ride for Andrew, Daniel, and Jonathan. They thought the takeoff and landing were really cool, and they had fun choosing whatever drink they
wanted.
Uncle Sam and Aunt Linda's house
Emily and I stayed in the room upstairs, and the boys stayed in the bonus room above the garage
Family get-together on Sunday
So many people came:Harve, Grandma, Jackie, Adam, Stan, Sierra, Eric, Jenny and her kids, Elisha with
her boyfriend Thomas and his daughter Jenny, Karen and Jim came down from St. Paul, Lori and the kids, Lisa and Brian and
their kids, Brooke and Erik and their kids.Grandma
was so happy to see us; the kids hadn't been there since 2011.The kids had a great time getting to know
their second cousins.I loved how Sierra
got everyone together to introduce themselves.They played hide and seek and played with the kitties in the barn.They also played corn hole.Ben came later, and he took all the kids on 4-wheeler
rides.
Getting ready to play hide-and-seek
Jenny's little girl, Rosie
Uncle Jim, Karen, and Grandma
Great-grandkids
Jonny with Jenny, Thomas' daughter
Andrew
Daniel showing the kitty to Grandma
Corn hole
4-wheeler rides!
Monday was Memorial Day, so we went to the ceremony at the St. Ansgar Cemetery. Linda came with us. It was a very nice
ceremony at the cemetery, and they read Grandpa's name.We saw Brooke
and her kids there.After the cemetery,
we stopped at the Veterans memorial (Grandpa is on that, too!), then the Lutheran Cemetery, Casey’s for a
bathroom stop, and then to Grandma’s for a bit.The kids rode around the farm on the golf cart.We went to the ribeye sandwich lunch at the Legion.The kids loved it—it was so good, especially
the desserts!On the way back to Sam and
Linda’s we drove by the wind mill that is on their land.The kids played with Adri and Evan and Lindsay
at Linda’s.The bigger kids played cards
together.Jonny and Evan had fun playing
with water in the sandbox.Later, Claire
and Jonny played with kitties.Linda
made us yummy sloppy joes for dinner. Chase,
Claire, and Cullen stayed the night at Sam and Linda's, too.
Tuesday: The kids played with
kitties in the morning.Linda and I sat
in the driveway and watched the kids play.Andrew got to drive the 4-wheeler by himself.After lunch, the kids and I
went back to Grandma’s.Jonny wasn’t happy about it and kept asking to go “home,” aka Sam and
Linda’s farm, to play with the kitties. Next we went to Mason City
to have dinner with Freeses. Grandpa and Grandma Freese, Richard,
Debbie, Robert, Leah, and their kids Owen and Eli were all there.On the way back, we went to HyVee to pick up
fruit and find Sweetleaf products.
Wednesday: The kids played around
farm again in the morning.Stan had
called and planned to go to Grandma’s so he could see us again.When it was time to leave, we couldn’t find
Andrew.We called for him and looked all
around the house.Finally, we found him
out in the field with Uncle Sam.We went
to Grandma’s where Stan was planting corn and the kids helped with the planting.We left around four and drove to Riceville to
see Rose and Merrill at the County Line Locker.After that, we drove to Osage to visit my Great Aunt Lorraine. She has helped me a lot with family history. Afterwards we went to the ball
fields in Osage to see Chase’s game.Then we went to dinner at the drive-in and got to see Vanessa.The food was awesome, especially my pork
tenderloin! Lucas came with us; he and Jonny got along well.
Thursday: Linda had planned to go to a class that afternoon, but they cancelled
the class so she had to go instead early that morning.We got up and packed and left by 9:30am.Emily was a huge help, as was Nathaniel.We drove to St. Ansgar and dropped off Lucas
at home and then went to Grandma’s.Stan came over again.Grandma talked
a lot about her history.The kids played the Wheel of Fortune game
they had found.We met Linda and Brooke for lunch
at Paradise Pizza, and I had the pork tenderloin again. I was hard to say goodbye to everyone. Before we left town, we stopped by the cemetery one last time.
On the way to the
airport, we headed to Hernke Dairy to see where Ben works.He taught us some things about the farm and took us on a tour, and
then he got a call that a cow was having trouble giving birth so we got to go
watch.Daniel didn’t want to see but the
rest of us did.
This was the calf that we saw being born. It's a girl! Ben says her mama will lick her clean until she looks like the baby on the left.
They have 500 cows in this barn, plus 250 more in another! Then there are the babies, too. It was very educational to see how they manage it all!
We made it to the Mall of America by about 5pm.First, we went to Nickelodeon Universe. We bought enough tickets for each of the kids to ride three times (except for Jonny who said he didn’t want to ride anything but he went on a roller coaster).There should have been enough for two rides for Jonny, but we somehow got cheated out of a ride.We’re still not sure what happened.After the rides we stopped into the Lego store and then bought treats at the Nestle ice cream store.We decided to save our treats for the plane and went to the food court for dinner.
After dinner, we had to get gas and get to the
airport.I knew exactly where the gas
station was, but the road zigzagged and I missed the turn and I couldn’t turn
around.I made the mistake of trusting
the GPS, which took us to the airport parking garage!I finally got us out of there and to a
different gas station.I was so
frustrated!While I was pumping gas, I
saw this white BMW pull up and it was blasting some rap music.I looked at the driver and it was a
middle-aged white guy, who looked a little bit like my dad!We had a good
laugh over that and headed back to the airport.Now all we had to do was find the car rental return, but the sign was covered
and the sun was shining in our faces so we missed the turn and had to go all
the way around again.Ugh!Andrew had the best comment: “And this is why
you get to the airport early!”Yes, son,
it is! We had planned ahead, luckily, so we were just fine.We got through security and got to our gate
in plenty of time.It was a good flight
home.The kids loved the TV screens in
the seats where they could watch whatever they wanted.The flight to Minneapolis didn’t have that,
so the kids were pretty excited.We
arrived and Michael was already there at the curb to greet us.
All Daniel wanted for his birthday was a party with his closest friends at our house. They had so much fun swimming and playing on the trampoline. Not much time was left for the video games they had planned to play ("Bummer!" his mom said sarcastically).
Earlier that day, I went to his school to bring treats for his class and have lunch with him. Here he is with his 4th grade teacher.
And this is how he can be found most days, when it's not screen time. He loves to read!!
