Another 4th of July come and gone!

Behind as usual, here is what our 4th of July consisted of.  I absolutely LOVE this holiday!  We always have so much fun celebrating America with friends, fireworks and lots of food!

We started off the celebration by driving down to Sioux City to see Grandma Lori perform with the symphony in a special concert on the Morningside campus.  It was a gorgeous evening to be outside and the boys mostly appreciated the beautiful music!

Then we celebrated on the actual 4th in our usual way, with a pot-luck barbeque with our good friends!  It is always so fun to see how these kids have grown and changed from the year before...and to see if we've added any since the previous year.  A few years ago we had added FIVE babies in just one year...this year it was only one.  Who knows what next year will hold!? 

This year's group - HERE are pics from the last few years

It was such a nice night, probably 20 degrees cooler than last year.  The kids of course still wanted to "swim" but also ran through a bouncy house, set off driveway fireworks and decorated star cookies!

We of course ended the evening with watching the fireworks display from our friends' driveway.  The boys enjoyed the show and jumped up and down at nearly every firework declaring it their favorite!



Hitting the slopes

Later in January, Matt and I got away again.  This time, instead of sunny Arizona, we headed to Breckenridge, Colorado for a few days of skiing with our good friends Tim and Shelly and their little guy Brayden.  We missed our boys and soon realized that we just might have to take at least Ben next year to get him learning to ski early!

I quickly realized that my life as a stay-at-home mom has not kept me in as good of shape as I probably should have been to go skiing for the first time in 8 years!!!  That did not stop me from skiing most of Friday and doing a pretty good job of keeping up with everyone.  Shelly and I called it quits early enough in the afternoon that the guys were able to get in a few good runs on some blacks. . .something I did not even want to think about trying!

Saturday was a little bit tougher as I ended up fevering all Friday night and woke up feeling quite weak that morning.  I gave it a good go for about two hours and then called it quits for the weeekend . . . not quite the plan but I wasn't haven't the best luck staying upright on the slopes that morning!

Luckily we had some beautiful views from our condo at The Village so it made laying on the couch to recover and reading not so bad!  I also toughed it out enough to walk around downtown Breckenridge by myself for a few hours to do some shopping :)

All three nights we ventured out for a nice supper and I although I missed the boys by the last night, Matt and I thoroughly enjoyed our couple time, only having to share bites of our food with one another!  I'm already looking forward to next season!

Fiesta Bowl...

Matt and I started out 2013 by traveling to sunny Arizona to watch our Wildcats in the Fiesta Bowl.  The night before we left, it was -4 degrees in Iowa.  Needless to say, we were anxious to get to sunnier skies and a warmer climate!

The highs were only in the 60's which was apparently "cold" to the natives! Our car rental helper even had gloves on as he handed us the keys to our bright cherry-red convertible (only one of those things is true...!)

We stayed at a resort in Scottsdale and I must say that Matt did an EXCELLENT job booking this one! Since it was still close to Christmas, the palm trees and orange trees were still lit up with beautiful lights along the driveway as we pulled in.

We had a chance to explore Old Town Scottsdale for a few hours before the game and I made my poor husband take a picture next to a cactus. . . we did not notice the STOP sign until afterwards - oh well! Then we were off to the game.

K-State fans were EVERYWHERE and I haven't had that much fun tailgating in a long time!

And even though the game ended up as a total bust for our Wildcats, we had a great time getting away together. . . with 50,000 of our closest friends!

RAGBRAI . . . Here and Gone

This weekend we were able to witness an experience we have been waiting for since we moved to NW Iowa. . . RAGBRAI (Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa).  This year over 15,000 bicyclists emerged upon Sioux Center as their starting point to literally ride across Iowa in the next few days.  And we were fortunate that our home, just outside of town, was along the route!

We started by enjoying the festivites in town and riding our bikes around to check out what it was all about.

We stayed in town until late watching the fireworks, but that did not keep us from getting up at 6:30am to watch all the bikes come right past our house! We invited some of our good friends and had a yummy breakfast while waving "hello" to all the fun people up bright and early to beat the 100 degree heat heading our way.



The early bird. . . still a little sleepy!




Breakfast and bikes with friends




The view to the west from our house




The view to the east. . . quite the hill to climb!




Cooper finally joined us at 9am!




Good friends!!!



We did have one rider stop to eat with us towards the end and he was quite the character.. even blessing us with a few Catholic jokes.  Everyone left our house by 10am and we headed inside. . . thankful for a positive RAGBRAI experience.  Looking forward to next time!

And I'll leave you with a shot of what happens to your son's feet when you let him play outside during RAGBRAI with only Crocs on. . . GROSS!!!

Happy Fourth (a few days later!)

We are finally recovered from another great 4th of July here in Iowa!  The weather was quite hot last week but we kept cool by playing in the water!

This year, we celebrated America's freedom with our same group of friends as we have the past few years...and our group is growing!

2009

2010

2011

2012

We are so blessed to get to spend this holiday with our friends. Especially since we all have kids 5 years old and younger that play really well together and generally have a good time while their moms and dads hang out.

This year, our boys had a great time playing in the water, eating popsicles and watching fireworks with all of their friends.  Here's to many more fun times together!!!

We did it!

We (the boys and I) just got back from only our second completely solo trip to Kansas City and back.  And last August doesn't really count because Cooper was sleeping a lot back then and slept probably 3/4 of the way that time!

This time was not so easy.  The trip down was pretty uneventful and I was able to make it by only stopping once for gas and some quick snacks only an hour from my dad's.  What about the trip back you ask?!  Well...let's just say it was not quite as easy but we still only stopped once...more to get home quickly than anything!  But all in all, I'm so glad we went and now that I know we can do it and survive with (most) our sanity, we'll probably do it again later this summer!

We had such a great time visiting with my dad and brother and their wondeful wives!  We also got to spend the night at my brother and Charlotte's new house - so cute!  I was also fortunate enough to visit with two old friends; one I've known since high school and the other since my first year of middle school.  We've been in each other's weddings and are now getting together with our KIDS!!! Of course, we could not get a good picture of the three boys together so we took a girl's picture instead.

The last two days of our trip, we got to spend with my brother and his wife who live in Lee's Summit, Missouri.  We explored the downtown area one morning, took AWESOME naps in the afternoon (after a late night) then made supper for my dad and Lori to celebrate their anniversary.  Unfortunately, our Black Forest Torte did not look as good as the one online :) We still ate it with no problem!

Even looking at these memories now it almost made the not-so-fun car ride home worth it!