And I thought I was all caught up...ha! I totally forgot about these other summertime pictures. At least they all go together and are in order.
My sister, Sarah, was kind enough to drive home with us in our
un-airconditioned car on a
very hot day for
15 hours. (At least I think that's how long it took.) She took all of these pictures.
In the car. We were sweaty and the weather just got stickier the further east we traveled! HOT HOT HOT!
Home at last. Apparently she was taking pictures while I was in the shower or something one day because I know I wasn't around for these.
We went to a place we have here that is kind of like a McDonald's playland on steroids. It's three stories high, the tunnels are wider, and they encourage parents to play too. We had a great time.
There were a lot of slides in this thing, and this particular one was very fast. It reminded me of one of those speed slides at the water parks. I only went down it twice; that was enough for me.
He did not just go down that slide or he wouldn't look so calm. I sent him down it once before I realized how fast it was and he did NOT like it.
The big ball pit is very fun.
Another day Sarah and I went to visit some historic German colonies near here. Jim and Alex stayed home which was fortunate because we ended up being rained on the whole time. Notice how dry our clothes are in this picture? This was our five minutes of dry weather. We'd decided to walk around and it started pouring as soon as she took this photo.
It was raining buckets, but we bravely ran through it from shop to shop. Everyone commented on our poor wet kids. We weren't complaining, though. It was fun to get wet, and it was also the first day we weren't miserably hot.
The kids did eventually get a little cold, so I walked back to the car and picked everyone up. We ate our picnic in the car and got it nice and steamy. They thought it was fun to draw in the steam.
After lunch, we visited the rocker museum. It was actually our favorite place even though it was small and out of the way. Here is Iowa's largest walnut rocker.
They had a store with all sorts of wood made items and lots of neat wooden toys. The kids played in there for an hour and didn't want to leave!
We went around the building to use the restroom, and Sarah discovered Fabio in the outhouse.
We also discovered a big bug while waiting on one of the kids to use the actual restroom. I believe it's a cicada.
Then because the rain had let up, we checked out the 'display' in front of the rocker museum. Here we are with Windmill Willie.
There was a sign on these saying something like: Don't climb on the horses, they buck.
Annie's tractor got a little stuck.
We got into the car after our last stop to discover that the key wouldn't turn in the ignition. Since we were 30 min. from Jim we had a bit of a wait. Another reason why it was fortunate he wasn't with us.
Sarah only stayed for a couple of days and then our summer vacation was officially over. On to fall!
