The Rest of our Iowa Adventures

After Derick arrived home on Friday, we jumped into our list of fun things starting Saturday morning. First we went and had family pictures taken. It was raining the entire time so we were confined to a gazebo, at least until the end when Emily finally convinced someone to go out in the rain with her. Uncle Derick threw her up on his shoulders and ran all around the park, ending at the pond with three scuba divers having a lesson.

Saturday evening we had a dessert party in the garage for people that were no longer in the ward (our church congregation) but knew Derick from before his mission. It was a fun evening of catching up with friends, even though it was surprisingly freezing and we all huddled in the garage. During the day we had preparations for this party, errand running, and hanging out and hearing more of Derick’s mission adventures.

Sunday we went to church and spent time as a family.

Monday we headed out to have some fun. I found a park we had never been to that seemed promising for a little hike and some slack lining. After a 30 minute drive, much of which Emily was searching from trucks (called “beep beep” because of the noise they make when they back up), we arrived.  We all got out with great hopes which quickly ended due to the insane amount of bugs. The most fun there was jumping from pole to pole right next to the cars. We hopped back in the car and listened to Emily cry a good part of the drive back.

We went to a park near our home and set up the slack line. Everyone took turns between that and hanging out at the playground.

Our best attempt at a family picture. She wasn’t thrilled about sitting on the bench with us.

 

We arrived home just in time to make dinner. After Emily went to bed we made a fire in our back yard and roasted s’mores. This fulfilled my craving to go camping, at least for a little while. We tried out square marshmallows for roasting and graham crackers that were packaged in squares. We concluded it isn’t worth the hype, but a fun idea.

At some point during the night, Christine’s shoe was hijacked by Derick and Brian. Brian dangled her shoe over the fire as a damsel and distress and Derick surprised us all by leaping over the fire and grabbing the shoe, landing in some type of roll maneuver on the grass.

Dad used Derick and Brian as poles to and hoisted himself up, twice, proving superior strength in the family still.

We ended our night with throwing popcorn kernels in the coals and remaining log, waiting for them to pop while the fire died down. As soon as we added water and put it out for the night, the entire household ran inside to try and take a hot shower.

We left around noon ET on Thursday. I drove the first couple of hours and then we stopped to get gas. Emily fell on the sidewalk while we were at the gas station and cut the inside of her lip and scraped the outside pretty bad. There was lots of blood (which we have learned from her numerous falls is very normal for the mouth) and the manager of the gas station was kind enough to give us some paper towels to try and clean her up a bit before we headed back in the car.  The last hour and a half were a little long, but we made it!