Iowa - Family Time

What's most impressive about our annual pilgrimage to the homeland -- aside from the mileage covered, corn consumed and jumps off the high dive -- is the number of friends and family members we're able to see in a very short period of time. While we traveled for ping pong fun with Aunt Katherine and Uncle L, to belatedly celebrate Ethel's 98th birthday in Des Moines and to check out the Mettenburgs' new Pittsburg digs, we also got a lot of people to come to us. Uncle Bernie, and Aunt Ellen and Uncle John drove down just to hang out for the afternoon, Aunt Kara, Aunt Becky, Uncle Steve, Erin, Olivia, Maura & Sam all came from the Chicago area for some much needed cousin/niece/nephew time. And even cousin Blaine managed to make a pit stop between St. Paul and Milwaukee (or more accurately, some suburbs of them) to play in a wagon, swim in the pond and roast marshmallows with us. Meanwhile, Grandma and Grandpa Z graciously played host for us (which involved a fair amount of cooking, and a lot of searching for errant baseballs).

Naturally, we had a lot of fun with the Fawcett side as well, and hopefully memories of Corn Fest, camping, boating and pajama playdates with Grace will tide us over until we're back in Iowa for Thanksgiving and can see everyone again.