Home, sweet, home.

We're home. We had a great time in Iowa. It seemed to go too fast and we didn't have enough time to do everything we wanted and still relax. Our drive was pretty painless on Thursday. We pulled out of here around 7:30 am and made a couple of long stops along the way to stretch our legs and save our sanity. The kids do so well in the car, but even I can only handle so much sitting! We got there around 3:30 pm and went straight to unload the car first. We made up our beds (since Annabeth didn't nap we knew we'd be rushed later on) and went over to Grandpa & Grandma's house. We stay at Nick's mother's house and she was working on Thursday so we had dinner with his Grandparents. We all ate until our tummies hurt and called it an early night for the kids. Nick and I waited up for his mom to get home and stayed up way too late for the night on it's way. Annabeth slept horrible. She went down fine and was fine until we came down to go to bed. It's like she knew we were there and wouldn't sleep. Nick was her target and on her side of the room so she screamed for him until he finally said 'enough' and made a pallet on the floor around the corner and I hunkered down on the pull out just out of her sight. We got about 2 hours sleep that night. Totally miserable.

On Friday morning, we got up and around early (what else, right?). We tend to start every morning while we're there off with a trip to Wal-Mart. We scooped up some new ISU gear and picked up breakfast before heading back to the house. We expected everyone would still be sleeping, but they were up and waiting on us. We (Meghan, Kathy, Nick, Evan, Annabeth and I) were driving into Des Moines to visit the Blank Park Zoo. The weather was beautiful. Mild and breezy. They had some great exhibits there, including an awesome jellyfish pool. I forgot the zoo was so small. It took us less than an hour to walk the whole thing. We finished with a train ride and Evan and his Aunt Meghan sat on the back caboose seat. We've never been able to choose that seat before and Evan was excited to be all the way in the back. They even faced backwards!

We drove back to the house and put Annabeth down for her nap and Nick, Meghan, Evan and I went the the 4th of July parade in Pella. It was the first parade Evan has ever been to and we had fun. Evan isn't nearly mean and aggressive enough for a parade like that. haha I had a hard time not smacking a kid or two that were too big to be stealing candy (and bags of it!) from the smaller kids. Evan asked for some cotton candy and ate the whole bag before the parade even started! Once the parade started he thought it was the coolest thing ever. After only about 30 minutes, he said he was done and ready to go home. it was HOT and he already had a small supply of candy and he was happy with that. He suckered Nick into a snow cone as we left and we headed back to Oskaloosa. We made a pit stop at Grandpa & Grandma's for home made ice cream to cool off. We went back to get Annabeth and back over to Grandpa and Grandma's for dinner.

After dinner we put Annabeth down for bed and headed outside for sparklers and lightening bugs! I can't even describe how many there were! It was the craziest thing ever. There were hundreds of the little bugs just in the back yard and they were all flying just a foot or so off the ground. Perfect for Evan to catch them all! We first started catching them and just letting them go, then we decided to o it the right the way and put them in a jar. We caught tons. And the big release was very cool! It was so much fun! The sparklers were short-lived. Evan wanted to do them really bad, but then once he had it in his hand, he didn't like it. Nick finished off the box and Evan went back to catching lightening bugs!

On Saturday, we had already decided we weren't going to be in the car. We woke up early and made our morning trip to Wal-Mart. It was little Annabeth's birthday and Kathy had ordered a cake from Jaarsma's, a local Dutch bakery there in Oskaloosa. We had wrapped up and packed up all of Annabeth's presents and she opened them there. That girl cracked me up. She is an Elmo fantatic. She would start to open a gift and just unwrap it enough to see what it was. If it wasn't Elmo, she'd just stop and move on to another one. We had to beg and help her unwrap all the presents! She had a one-track, Elmo mind! ha!

We had a grilled lunch of hamburgers, hot dogs and Pella bologna and watermelon. It was all so good. By then, it was nap time again. Kathy and I took that opportunity to drive back over to Pella, just the two of us, for some shopping. You all know how I love to shop! I picked up the most adorable little wooden Dutch shoes for Annabeth and a pair of Dutch clog slippers for Evan. I had been wanting to go over there and shop, but never had the time with all the other things we tried to do each time we went back. It was very relaxing and nice to have some one on one time with my mother-in-law! We swung in Jaarsma's again to get Nick some Dutch letters and cookies. Yummmm!

Kathy and I made it back just after Annabeth woke up. It was almost dinner time already, but I was wanting Nick to take me around Oskaloosa and let me get some pictures of some of the important spots from his hometown. We left the kids with their Grandma and he drive me around to get some pictures. It was special hearing about Nick's childhood memories and seeing the places to go with them. We were only gone about an hour and got back just in time for Grandpa & Grandma to come over bearing pizzas! We had dinner and cake and home made ice cream. What a wonderful couple of days!

Yesterday we drove home. The kids did great, yet again. We made it in under 7 hours with a couple of long stops and big money for gasoline. I'm so glad we didn't let that stop us from going. Nick even commented that he was glad I made him go. That poor guy. He has such a hard time just taking time for himself!

I'm overly exhausted today. Just needing some good rest and a down day. I have laundry to do and kids to take care of. Wow! What a life!