Happy 90th Birthday Grandma Williams . . .

The whole reason we went to Iowa last weekend was to celebrate my Grandmother's 90th birthday. She and my grandfather have been married for 72 years and it is amazing that they have hit another milestone together. We had a great celebration of food, family, and lots of sharing time. We all wrote down questions that we wanted gma and gpa to answer and then we sat around and listened to all of the answers. Where they were born, how they met, the first car they bought after they were married (A model A - black), etc. Now we have it all on tape. We listened to my dad and his brother and sister all tell stories. I know that this is a day we will all remember.

Gpa getting a good laugh over something that my dad said.
Some of the kids playing on the merry go round at the park down the hill from the Methodist church where we held the celebration.There is a reason that teeter totters are no longer on the playgrounds at schools. This would be the "before" picture of Grace and Caden. The next would be a movie of Grace letting go and Caden flying forward and landing on the big metal arm and scraping the whole bottom of his chin. Leave it to my children to figure out how one of them can get hurt :)
In the afternoon we all played a game of softball. This is some of my cousins and my uncle Dean in the blue
My brother Mike at bat. My cousin Barry is the catcher.
Grace on 2nd.
Caden on 1st.
There was a little stream that separated the play park and the softball field. Of course, Caden managed to find two frogs. He carried them in this cup all afternoon. It was really cute. He had already put one back when I took this picture. My little frog boy :)

Pictures of My Grandparent's Farm . ..

This trip was so much fun. First, we were celebrating that my grandfather was out of the hospital and able to join us. We were so worried that was not going to be a possibility. Second, I saw Iowa through my brother Steve's girlfriend's eyes . . . the beauty of all the cornfields, crops, rolling hills, etc. It's the small things we take for granted that "city folks" have never seen :) I should have taken pictures of my Gma Talty's town of Corning. I couldn't believe all of the flooding. The fairgrounds were under water, all of the fields were flooded, etc. Very sad.

Great Wolf Part II

We all know that Chris is "fun-loving" and acts like one of the kids when he can. Well, he was in rare form at Great Wolf Lodge. They have all of these hoses, water guns, pumps, buckets, etc. that are attached to the big structure of the park. It allows you to get people wet that are walking underneath you, in front of you, etc. Chris tried very hard to keep getting Amy and I wet. He did not succeed the first night so he enlisted Emily to help him nail Amy on Friday morning.
Emily telling her mom that she only wanted to be on the left side.
Chris is in place up top ready to spray Amy. Amy has no idea he is up there.
Ready, Set . . .
Gotcha!
Emily was very proud of herself for getting her mom soaked and Amy was a great sport about it :)

Great Wolf Lodge . . . Kansas City, KS

We left for Iowa on July 24th and decided a couple of days before we left that we were going to stop in Kansas City, KS with my sister-in-law, my nephew, and niece. She was picking my brother up at the airport on Friday (he was in Boston on business) and we jumped at the opportunity to break up the trip. It's a 12 hour drive (with stops)to my grandparent's house and about 8 hours to Kansas City. The kids were great travelers and we stayed at the Great Wolf Lodge - which was a blast. We had been wanting to take the kids to the one in Grapevine, but just haven't had the chance so this was the perfect opportunity.

We left our house at 6am on Thursday morning. The kids watched TV almost the whole 8hours, I read a book, and Chris drove. We arrived at Kansas City about 2pm and decided to go sit down at a restaurant and eat lunch before we checked in at the hotel. At 3:20 we checked in, but our room wasn't ready so we decided to walk around Target instead. I bought both kids a new game for their Nintendo DS because they had done a great job in the car - minimal fighting and "he's touching me", etc. When we got back to the hotel we decided that we were all exhausted and took a nap before we headed to the waterpark. We slept for about an hour and then promptly suited up and headed down to the waterpark. Here is what we saw:

It was massive! Huge areas for all of us to hang out, baby area, inside pool, outside pool, etc. It was like the Wet and Wild that I went to growing up, except that most of it was all inside. They have this huge bucket that drops 1,000 gallons of water every 5 minutes or so. A bell rings and then people run to stand under it and get drenched. Chris, Amy, Emily, Brandon, Grace and Caden all stood under it so that I could get their picture. Caden and Chris getting off a water slide.
Grace and Emily in the lazy river
A before picture
Here comes the water
Woo Hoo!

My Big Brother . . .

My sister in law sent this picture to me and it is such a great picture that I had to put it on my blog! We are leaving on Thursday to head to Iowa for my grandmother's (dad's mom) 90th birthday. Don't my grandparents look great in this picture!! My oldest brother, Tom, is not going to be able to make that celebration (he has a really good reason) so he and his family went to Iowa for the 4th instead. This is my brother, his wife Charlene, my nephew Dylan in the back (19), Cassie will be 16 next month, and Matthew is 17. He'll be a senior in high school next year. They are such great kids and I wish that they lived closer so that we could see them more often!

My grandfather (92) is in the hospital right now with disorentation, high blood sugar (he's diabetic), and a high white blood count. I don't know that we'll end up doing a celebration for grandma if he's not doing well, but we're all planning on going up anyway so that we can see them. I was up there in February, but the kids and Chris haven't been up there with me in 2 years, so it's time. Then all of our traveling for the summer is done!!

More Illinois Pictures . . .

Nice Uncle/Cousin Todd took the kids on the 4 wheeler for a ride. This was an activity that they all did quite a bit. . .as long as they could talk an adult into taking them! The kids loved it!
Courtney (11), Grace, Kayla (7), and Caden doing the "cha cha" for all of us. Courtney and Kayla are sisters and they live in California. They spend the summer with their Grandma on the farm :)
We did sparklers and firecrackers a couple of nights and this is one of Chris's pictures. We had our own 4th of July a week later :)

Caden and his froggy friend . . .

To give you a little background about Caden:

He doesn't like to get dirty. Not sandy in the sandbox, not paint all over his hands from a craft project, etc. When it is raining and he isn't wearing his rain boots, I have to carry him to where we are going because he doesn't want to get the bottom of his shoes wet. It's crazy. So imagine my surprise (you can see my face in the first picture) when I saw him covered in mud from head to toe and holding a frog in his hands. He won't hold his frogs that he has at home either :)