Fun in Iowa...

From Denver, we headed East towards Iowa to spend a short week with my Mom and Dad.  We stopped in Lincoln at my Auntie Virginia's house for a BBQ lunch.  It was great to see her, my Uncle Gary, cousin Allie, and Grandma Dorothy!

Aunt Virginia and Maya

Uncle Gary & Gabi...they had a blast playing together and I'm sure he slept for days afterwards! :)

Gabi & Auntie Virginia

We reached my parents' house on Saturday evening...just in time for dinner!  My parents always feed us like kings when we're there!  The girls had fun playing in the sprinkler, going to the park, and playing Uno inside...it was super hot and humid!

Gabi loved catching fire flies...we don't have lightning bugs in Wyoming.

Gabi did lots of sparklers.  Maya tried them, but she didn't like it.

Maya riding my old horse "Blaze."

 On Tuesday, we went to the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines.  Even though it was hot, we enjoyed seeing all the animals.

Gabi feeding a giraffe

Maya high-fiving the lion

The really enjoyed riding the train through the zoo.

Maya and Grammy Mary on the train.

Daddy & Gabi on the train.

We made our first trip to an urgent care clinic for stitches while we were in Des Moines.  Maya was running into my parents' walk-through closet and must have been looking behind her because she smacked the edge of the open door and cut her forehead.  It bled a ton and she was pretty shaken up.  The cut was about an inch long and fairly deep.  She was quite a trooper and didn't even cry as they were stiching her up.  She has 4 stiches in all and will get them out on Monday.  You can see them at the very top of her forehead in the train picture above.

We were thankful to be in Iowa over the 4th of July because we were able to see two excellent fireworks shows (all of the fireworks in Wyoming were cancelled because it is so dry).  We packed a picnic dinner on the 3rd and headed down to the Iowa State Capitol lawn to attend the Yankee Doodle Pops concert and fireworks show.  Different jazz bands played for awhile and then the Des Moines Symphony played ending with a fireworks show set to their music.  It was really fun! 

Iowa State Capitol building...the girls thought the gold dome was super cool!

A view of the stage...they set the fireworks off behind the stage.

Urbandale has a huge parade on the 4th of July.  We watched the parade for almost 2 hours and it wasn't even done when we left!  The girls scored big time with the candy!


Watching the parade

We were all able to view Urbandale's fireworks show from my parents' house and it was even over a full moon!  Here is a picture of Gabi doing even more sparklers.  I need to work with my camera a bit to be able to shoot fireworks.  I got this photo of Gabi with a sparkler by leaving the shutter open a while...it turned out kinda neat!



Gabi's big news is that she can ride a big bike with NO training wheels!!  She has had a balance bike for about a year and has been doing so well on it, that we all decided it was time for a real bike.  Since she already had the balancing part down, Joe worked with her for less than an hour on how to do the pedals and steer the bigger frame and then she had it!  We didn't even have to put the training wheels on!  She is so excited about it and we're glad she was able to learn on the level concrete sidewalks in Urbandale and not the hilly gravel roads around here!  She rode it all the way to Joyce's house and back today and did great on the gravel roads too!

Joe getting her going!

"Look Mom! I can do it!"  She had a big smile on her face the whole time!



Maya's legs are still a little too short for the balance bike, but she cruises right along on her scooter!



Phew!  That's all for now!  I promise to update the wyomingishome.blogspot.com blog this weekend with pictures of our landscaping.  Thanks for checking in on us.  Tara