why i flew home from Des Moines (via O'Hare, of course)

So after several Sangrias on Sunday with the Surgeons, my sister, my mother and I stuffed our shit into the silver Subaru and sailed across the sprawling flatlands of Illinois and into the rolly, rolly hills of Iowa. (didn't know Iowa was hilly, did you?)

We even crossed the Mississippi, which disappointed my mother by being so small and muddy. ("THAT was the Mississippi? It wasn't even that big! And where were all the men singing 'Old Man River'? And where was the choir to herald us?")

I have to admit, it was kind of lame. (So lame I had to get my thumb in the picture)I slept for most of the trip (it did start at 5:45 a.m., thank you very much) but this is pretty much all I missed (until we got to Iowa):
Attractive, sure, but Very Boring.


We finally got to Des Moines to meet my cousin Brian (and drop off the silver Subaru) around 11:30 and went to my aunt and uncle's house in Ames. Where we caught up with Jen & Mike.

(this is a borrowed picture from their family website... I didn't get a good one of the two of them)Adorable, no?


I spent the first three hours running around the backyard chasing Ella (on the left, Piper on the right) in hopes that she would tucker out. No such luck. Brian (or, as we call him, "Unkie Bri Bri") and I got tired ourselves and had to lay around in the grass. Which it turned out I was allergic to. Fun!

The kids were ridiculously cute, though, and very well behaved. But you can see from this picture of their dad, Mike, that they require a certain level of energy.

Hanging with this side of the family is always fun, the food was great (yum, spicy corn casserole!), and silliness abounded. Like my mom riding Uncle Joe's bike:
(don't know if you can see it in the background, but look at the dashboard of Brian's car -- it's covered in little red devil ducks.)


Then there's more of the adorable red-headed family:

(cousins Jen, Ella and Mike)


and an attempt to get the whole family... which didn't work so well. (someone has a better copy of this)
Instead of submitting myself to a houseful of early risers and children under 5, I stayed over at Unkie Bri Bri's house (on the comfiest couch ever!), which was a little like something out of a science fiction movie. I felt like if I rolled over in the night, I might accidentally launch a rocket, or perhaps alter some nuclear forcefield keeping everything in place. (not true, but he does have a lot of techie stuff.)
Do you know ANYONE with 5 pounds of silly putty on their kitchen counter? I do. And that's pretty much why I went to Iowa. (The family, not the Silly Putty, silly)