Last Friday I flew out of Portland to Minneapolis, MN to Waterloo, IA where my Dad and my brothers Joe, Ben and Jacob met me at the airport. On the way home we stopped at 4 Queen Dairy Cream where "Dreams do come true". This ice cream place buries any other. I don't know what makes it so delicious but it is. I made it a point to visit there each day that I was in Cedar Falls. :)
It was a surprise to most of my siblingst that I was coming. It was fun to jump on my sister Amy the next morning and smooch on her cute family (except for Brett. I didn't smooch on him) the next morning when they woke up. Saturday morning we drove to Cedar Rapids to watch my brothers Ben and Jacob play in their H.S. Soccer Sub-State game. They ended up losing 2-1 in overtime (dumb ref.) but it was a good game anyhow. My sister Becca and brother Andrew showed up and then my sister Elizabeth with her family. It was awesome because they didn't know I was coming. And the funniest thing was that my sister Becca and I were both wearing red shirts with our hair in a ponytail and it's the exact same color and length.
After the game we went back to Cedar Falls and met up with my sister Steph and her family. It was amazingly chaotic and I LOVED it! Of course I could enjoy it more because I didn't have my own children there to worry about. I do wish I could have brought my girls so they could play with their cousins, but I'm not going to lie....it was really nice being there alone.
Sunday morning we went to church and Joe spoke in sacrament meeting, his last talk before he leaves on his mission. It was beautiful and he's going to do an amazing job in Spain! Then we all ditched out of church, ate lunch and went to Ben's H.S. Graduation. It was the shortest, least boring graduation I've ever attended. Including my own. Regardless, we all brought books and cards and all the males were either asleep or watching ultimate fighting on their phones.
Monday morning I really felt the time difference when I woke up at 6 to help mom. Iowa is 2 hours ahead of Oregon, so at night I ready to party when everyone else is ready for bed, but man...the mornings killed me. It was like I was waking up at 4 am. So we went to the church and set up all the chairs and tables and decorations and food for Ben's graduation open house. It turned out amazing and Ben is apparently Mr. Popularity because there were tons of people there the whole time. We came up with a great idea for his sign in book. We put out stamp pads and had people stamp their thumb and sign their name. It was pretty clever and alot of people really got a kick out of it.
We bolted from there to the Quad Cities, 2 1/2 hours away. I was riding with my sister and pretty much became delusional and passed out for the whole trip. We got there just before Andrew's bike race started. I think I'll detail those adventures in another post. After the race we ate dinner at this amazing Mexican restaurant.
Tuesday, thankfully, we didn't have any plans. We all just hung out and enjoyed each other until I had to leave at 4pm. There ended up being some weather issues, so my plane didn't actually leave until 6, but I just took a nice little snoozer at the airport. Got back to my mother in law's house at 12:45 and decided I should probably sleep there rather than risking my life driving home. So I got back to my sweet girls at 9am on Wednesday.
It was such a great trip being with all my siblings, parents and grandma! I love them all SO MUCH.
2 comments:
How fun to be together with ALL your siblings! I know in my family that doesn't happen that often! What a treat and it looks like you guys had so much fun!
yeah, i was there too. you can see me in the pictures, although i wasn't mentioned in the post. ;) hehe.
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