Highlights: (in no particular order although the first one was pretty much top highlight for me!)
1. Meeting baby Quinn! I feel so lucky that we only had to wait 3 weeks to meet this precious baby girl. I can't believe how it all worked out...Quinn got her passport in 2 weeks, Tony was able to take a leave, they found flights that worked, etc. Pretty sure my sis was made to be a mom. She has a confidence that I didn't have until Max was 6 months old, I swear. I'm so proud of her for everything she has done on her own this past year and am so happy she gets to spend a few extra weeks at home with my parents while Tony is out of town.
2. Baptism. Since everyone (except Chris and Tony's sister Erin and fam) would be there on Sunday July 27th, Tara and Tony decided to get Quinn baptized. It was a great service at Tony's church in Burr Oak by the same Pastor that married them just over a year ago. We had a lovely brunch at Rubiyat afterwards as well!
2. Cousin time! My kiddos always love cousin time and this trip was no different. We did lots of fun things with Livi, Grace and Grady. Mya especially was very fond of Grady this trip because he is not quite as breakable as Quinn so she enjoyed picking him up and playing with him.
3. Family Fun Day. There was one day on our trip to Decorah that the entire family would be around at the same time! For as long as we were there, it was crazy how it worked out that we were always missing one person! So we took full advantage of our day and had such a great time playing games, eating, getting some alone time with adults, and an awesome surprise dinner that my parents did for us (complete with hiring a babysitter for all of the kiddos so we could eat in peace!)
4. Dubuque friends! We spent a few days in Dubuque seeing some of our favorite neighbors and friends. We stayed the first night at our next door neighbors and it was pretty cute how giddy the kids were as we were pulling into our neighborhood. Although I'm glad the house sold, it was kind of sad to see the sign on our yard! Mya asked if we could play on the swing set (we gave it away) and Ivy asked for a purple popsicle from our house! It was hard for me to see them wanting to go back to our house. Other highlights were spending an afternoon on the Mississippi, Max got to go on a bike trip with his buddies Sam and Owen, we surprised some friends at a play date, a huge park play date, getting to swim at the new pool at the country club and having conversations with friends who could pick up right where we left off! For staying at 3 different houses, the kiddos did amazing with being flexible and understanding of everything we did!
5. Canoeing. Two of our old neighbors came up to Decorah on Saturday Aug. 2nd and we had our 2nd annual canoe trip on the Upper Iowa River! Since Chris wasn't around during our Dubuque time, it was great for him to see his buddies too. We had a beautiful day on the river and had a nice dinner in Decorah that night! Can't wait for the 3rd annual float next year;)
6. Cabin! We ended our trip with a few days at the cabin in Minnesota with Chris's parents and Uncle Jeff! It was the perfect way to end the trip because we just stayed put for a few days and got to relax. It was filled with eating good cabin food, drinking lots of coffee, playing in the lake, playing bean bags, making s'mores more than once, starting up the old fishing boat and cruising around a little bit, playing on the beach, reading, doing lots and lots of swimming, and playing cards.
Special thanks to everyone who helped us with lots throughout this trip with logistics, childcare, lodging, etc. We are already looking at the calendar and figuring out our next trip home!
2 comments:
A good summary of your trip Beth! We certainly enjoyed having you guys around. Love all the pictures - especially the ones up at the cabin!
Wow, what a trip! I don't know how you do it, Beth:) But so glad you had so much fun and got to see so many people. I'm glad we had a short time together! The pics from the cabin are great!
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