Visits!

Scott and I had wonderful visitors the last two weekends!  Two weeks ago, Melanie came to visit for the Father's Day weekend.  We hadn't seen her in a while, and this was the first time she had ever driven to our house all by herself--Good job, Melanie!

This past weekend my friend Lindsay and her kids came to visit.  Getting here was exciting--Lindsay left at 4am from Pennsylvania on Thursday morning in the hopes of making it all the way to Iowa in one day.  After driving for 3 hours, unfortunately, she realized that she had left her wallet at home, and ended up driving almost all the way back home to get it...needless to say, adding in 6 hours to a 15 hour trip didn't help her cause!  She did arrive Friday afternoon, and we had probably the most beautiful weather of the summer (and no rain!)  

Natalee likes to pick up sticks, and we were happy to let her pick up our entire yard!  She made a little stick fortress in the mud.

We got out the fire bowl in an attempt to get rid of many of the above-mentioned sticks.

Natalee and Scott caught a bunch of fireflies.

On Saturday I hoped to go out to Lake Keomah State Park, or maybe to Edmunson Park, or walk on the bike trail.  We woke up to rain, and it continued to rain all day long!  What better back up rain plan than getting out the Barbies!

Scott ended up going to Iowa City all day on Saturday.  His brother Shawn has been in and out of the hospital the last couple months, and they finally isolated the problem to his gall bladder.  They performed surgery last Friday to remove it, and were only able to remove 2/3 of it.  Shawn now has a drain in his gall bladder, and in 3-4 months will go back into surgery to remove the rest of the gall bladder and take care of a couple other things.  I had to coach volleyball at Penn for a few hours Saturday afternoon, so we left Lindsay and the kids to fend for themselves for an afternoon!  

On Sunday we went to church, had lunch, and then joined my sister and nieces at the water park in Pella.  I had to laugh when I realized that Scott and I were the only adults at the pool actually going down slides, jumping off diving boards, and playing in the water!  I guess the 'cool' parents just watch from the sidelines...