Vacation at Grandma & Grandpa's

The kids & I spent last week in NW Iowa visiting family and "vacationing" at my parents' house.  It was an eventful week.  Here's the rundown...  (Note: My sister has an awesome blog and did a great job documenting much of the week with humor.  Links to her posts and others are included within this post with the tan-colored words.)

We drove to NW Iowa on Monday.  It was fun to have a friend/former Denver neighbor and her two girls ride along with us because the trip was extra long.  We stopped for a picnic lunch at the school playground in Clarion.  Then between road construction detours, flaggers and dropping our friends off in Alton it was almost 1 1/2 hours longer than straight-through.  Once we arrived Emily's treat for the evening was helping Auntie Abbie give Milo a bath.  She screeched when Milo shook and got her all wet (see video).

On Tuesday the kids and I headed to LeMars to visit all of Austin's grandparents and his sister & kids.  We had nice visits with everyone and Emily got to show off her bike-riding skills.  We also got to enjoy lunch from Bob's Drive-In.  In the afternoon/evening both of my sisters and families came over for supper.  I made a deal with Abbie that if she took my kids on a walk I'd mow her lawn.  It was a win-win.  I haven't mowed a lawn since high school and running the big Dixon mower from the farm is just plain fun.  I was a little rusty, but I got the job done.  The kids had fun, too.  Below are some pictures stolen from my sister's blog. 

They went to the City Park.  Emily, Lincoln and Cousin Ryan are quite the combo!  The kids also assisted Auntie Abbie in voting in the primary election. 

Wednesday was a gorgeous day.  Emily & I went swimming in Auntie Abbie's backyard pool.  This was the first time Emily had been in something deeper than bathwater.  The water was still pretty chilly and she was content just to sit on top of the air mattress (see video).  So was I! ;o)

In the evening my parents hosted my Dad's side of the family because my oldest cousin and her family were in town from Michigan.  They have three little boys, and I hadn't seen them since I was 8 months pregnant with Emily!  One of the fun things was taking pictures of the three great-grandsons who are within 5 months of each other.  Hudson was born between Lincoln and my nephew, Ryan.

Everyone also enjoyed my parents' beautiful backyard until the bugs started eating us alive.

One of my cousin's sons, Gramm, was born with spina bifida.  He is now 4 years old and doing amazing after lots of intensive therapy.  Even though he can't feel anything from his knees down, he can walk as fast as anyone using two canes (see video).  Emily was fascinated by them and called them "crunches." 

Thursday held a little adventure in the pouring rain.  Emily had been complaining of classic UTI symptoms for almost two days, so I decided I better try to get her in to see a local doctor.  We made it in and out of the office with the assurance that everything was perfectly healthy and normal.  Terrific.  As promised, we made a stop at the The Foreign Candy Company outlet store across the street from the doctor's office for some of "Aunt Courtney's candy". (My sister is the marketing manager for TFFC and the brand manager for their top-selling product: Rips Licorice--now available at Wal-mart!)  Among our loot was a giant lollipop Emily picked out.

Also on Thursday we attempted the obligatory "cousins" picture.  This is the best of what my sister got. 

I got terribly sick overnight on Thursday into Friday like I haven't been since I got food-poisoning in high school. Thankfully, there were plenty of people willing to take care of the kids while I rested and re-hydrated. It also worked out fine for everyone for us to stay an extra day. I was in no shape to travel home as originally planned! I was feeling a little better in the evening, so we made a quick trip up to Rock Rapids to go fishing in the river. That adventure lasted about 30 minutes. My dad spent more time prepping poles and untangling fishing line than actually fishing. Emily's attention span lasted about 2 minutes with the hook actually staying in the water no longer than 30 seconds. She did manage to catch herself at one point! ;o) She was more interested in holding the worms (eww!--see video) and checking out the playground than sitting still waiting for fish. We didn't catch anything anyway. It had been stormy almost every night and the river was running pretty fast.

Emily also went to the park, swam in Abbie & Wade's pool again and went golfing 10 holes with Abbie & Wade on Friday afternoon.  She had never been golfing before.  She got to set the tees, hold the flags and even help drive the golf cart.  She may have even hacked at a few balls.  What a lucky (and tired) girl!

The other highlights of the week for Emily were playing board games and working on her beginning /th/ sound.  My mom has an endless supply of games used in speech therapy over the years as well as some games from our childhood.  Emily has mastered the basic path game using a spinner or a single die.  She found plenty of people willing to play with her, too!  As part of the deal, my mom worked with Emily on correcting "free" to "three" through counting out each move on the board.  Emily is now working on transferring the correct /th/ sound to other words and doing great!

We finally made it safely home on Saturday evening.  I was again thankful to have a friend along who was willing to drive so I could rest some more.  It was a crazy but fun week.  Now it's going to take me another week to catch up and recover from being gone!