Road Tripin'...

While the husband is away, the girls will play...kinda, sorta..

Matt was away for a few days so I decided to road trip it to Lawton, IA for a visit with my grandparents.

And I sweet talked the lovely Lindsay to come along.

We're sisters. Can ya tell?

After four hours in the car and a one hour playground stop in scenic Sac City, we landed at the farm.

I have lots of fond memories of my grandparents house.

My brother and I used to run up and down this hill countless times.

We'd sometimes barrel roll down it or sit on the propane tank pretend to camp.

Ryan and I would park ourselves under my Grandma's mulberry tree filling our bellies and dotting our shirts with mulberry juice.

This city kid loved eating fruit straight from the tree.

It felt rebellious.

The mulberry tree came down years ago but there are still plenty of apple trees to climb.

I took A LOT of pics of Lindsay and the girls climbing trees. These were a couple of my favorites of Lindsay.

The first looks like she is an Amazon woman with a wee little CJ looking up at her with envy.

And I had to toss in the bad senior picture type photo. We had a good laugh at it.

Kate and CJ loved running in the wide open too.

The photo on the right looks like a remake of Little House on the Prairie.

After watching Lindsay and Kate climb trees CJ insisted she too could climb one herself.

I love the look of determination on her face.

This sheep is cute and all but I think it may have been cross bred with a goat because it sure seemed intent on trying to eat our shirts.

That explains the girls' hesitancy towards going any closer.

My grandparents' basement features some kid favorites.

A pool table, wide open spaces to chase balls and a pole.

Kate learned to climb the pole during our visit and at that point it is about all she wanted to do.

"Want to watch my trick?" "Have you seen me climb the pole?" "Can you do this too, Mom?"

She was proud and so was I.

I don't know what is going on here but these pictures put a smile on my face.

Ahhh, country air. It made these girls happy.

CJ and Great Grandpa Smith became quite good friends.

They shared lots of high fives. She giggled every time she saw him come in the door.

And when she wasn't high-fiving she was hanging out with her usual cup of milk.

I have never met anyone who loves milk more than this girl.

While indoors we spent a lot of time blowing up balloons.

Well, blowing them up and then letting them fly.

Who knew silly sounds from a flying balloon could be so much fun.

But what was even more fun was taking pictures of these girls blowing up balloons.

After three days it was time to head home.

To survive the trip the girls consumed lots of Oreos, watched lots of cartoons and did lots of...

...fighting.

At this point in the trip Lindsay and I were beginning to feel so delirious that we laughed hysterically when the above fight broke out.

In fact, I was laughing so hard I could hardly see. Which was bad since I was the driver.

We were all ready to get out of that van.

Thank you Grandma and Grandpa Smith for hosting us!!

And thank you to Lindsay for making the trip with the girls and me!!

It was a very fun weekend!!