I'm a bit late at posting this one as well but, once again, better late than never. Our summer vacation this year took us to Des Moines. May not seem like an incredible adventurous vacation, but it was perfect for our little family. The Williams and us packed our two days full of wonderful, and some not-quite-so-wonderful adventures.
The day we drove down we stopped at the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines. What a perfect little zoo for Iowa. We could have spent more than a half of a day there, but that was all we had. We saw tigers, lions, monkeys, ..., rode on a fun little train (highlight for Madison and Ayden) and Madison even got to feed a giraffe.
Then we headed for our hotel. The hotel we stayed at (the name I have forgotten), was awesome. We could have just hibernated in our hotel and had a wonderful time. It had an awesome pirate ship water park. I was so excited for Madison to go down the slides and play in the water. Matt and Brett had the wonderful idea to start the kids with the big waterslide (which you could take any age kid down). At the top, Brett challenged Matt to a race on the double slides. The competitive nature of my husband kicked in and Matt and Madison pushed off the top as hard as they could. Matt even layed down to increase speed. In the summed up story from my husband, the two of them were full speed about half way down and Matt knew they were in trouble. He pretty much held on to Madison with all his strength as the flew down the rest of the way, out the end, and under the water twisting and turning until they resurfaced what seemed like a very long couple of seconds. Needless to say, Madison wanted nothing to do with any slide from then on, but had a ton of fun in the kid pool.
... I just told Matt that I was blogging about him and Madison going down the slide and all he said was, "Did you write that we won?".
That night we ordered overpriced pizza, that was okay, and had a good night of sleep, Eliott and I in one bed and Matt and Madison in the other.
The next day we woke up and ate breakfast while Madison and Ayden sat at the windowwatching the waterpark, asking over and over when they were going to be able to swim. Finally we made our way down there and swam for the morning. We checked out of our hotel and wanted to do something before we headed home. We decided the Living History Farms was the place for us. It was okay... probably a bit old for our kids as we went from building to building learning about old ways of doing things. Interested, but not incredibly ideal for our little ones. Then for the funny part...
We saw a sign for a train ride and though, "Perfect - the kids will love the ride and we can relax on the train and drive around looking at the different things. So, we ran to catch the train and when we got there were told that we could put our huge strollers in the back. We told the lady that we would just leave them there, thinking that nobody would probably take them. She looked at us a bit funny, but we thought nothing of it and jumped on. As we drove, I thought it was a bit odd that the train was taking us around the back of the park, and we weren't really looking at anything other than highway and woods. I just figured the real stuff hadn't started yet. About ten minutes after we took off, the train stopped at the beginning of a woodsy trail and all I saw was a big water jug that you could hydrate up with. When the train stopped, everyone got off and headed for the trail. Brett, Karen, Matt, and I, and our two-year-olds and our two infants, sat there with totally confused looks on our faces.
Well... we soon realized that the train takes you to the beginning of the trail from which you are to hike a couple of miles through each of the century farms. The train driver told us that she was not the one that would be taking us back, then left us there. So, we started hiking. Madison refused to walk, so Matt carried her while I carried Eliott, until our wonderful friend Brett offered to carry him - did I mention he was also carrying Ahnie (there's a pic of this). Everyone had good attitudes (except for me at times... notice my expression in the picture of Brett carrying both kids... not the best), considering the circumstances. When we finally reached the end, we got back on the train to take us back to the beginning and the new (nicer) train diver looked at us and asked us if the strollers way back at the beginning were ours. He looked at us and said, "Why in the heck didn't you bring them with you!?!?". All I wanted to say was, "Where were you an hour ago???". Memories none-the-less...
We stopped at the Hickory house on the way home and ended our adventure with an incredibly yummy bbg meal and a wonderful ice cream sundea.
Great memories!
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