Weekend in Las Vegas- Part One

In May, my sister Schatzy moved to Las Vegas. Her husband took a job there in January, and the family finally caught up with him. We decided to head down there for a long weekend and my sister, Heidi, who live in Mesa, AZ decided to meet up with us there. We got a rough start when our van overheated about 30 miles from Vegas and we drove the last 10-15 minutes to her house with the heat on, which is most just a big deal because it was about 105. Yep, hot. There was more heat to come during our stay, but we also found some ways to keep cool. We hit up the parks and all of their water features.

You can see how red in the face Henry was before getting wet.

Wyatt mostly just sat in a puddle and splashed a little.

One park has some long tunnel slides which are super hot in the summer, so Schatzy started bringing these sleds from years back and the kids use the playground turf covered hill to sled and then get wet. Gavin and Sarah were going strong on this hill. Apparently now some of the neighborhood kids want to get sleds of their own, but good luck finding a sled in Las Vegas any time of year.We also had a lot of fun just hanging out at Schatzy and Al's new house. I don't ever want to live in Vegas, but I was seriously coveting this house. It is huge and with the horrible housing market there, they paid next to nothing for it. Her bathroom is bigger than my living room. Yeah, nice.
The only issue that we had was that the AC went out Saturday at about 3am, so there wasn't much sleep had after that. And since it was Sunday and a holiday weekend, it wasn't fixed until about 5 on Sunday. It got up to about 90 degrees in the house. Very hot, and turns out most of us aren't good at moving around in that kind of heat. We survived though, and made some memories.
Wyatt had to be hosed off in the sink after dinner one night.All of the kids lined up to have us light their sparklers. Luckily our at home fireworks show went down without too many incidents.Rachel burning the patriotic flame.Gavin keeping his distance fro them other kids.I think Henry was holding his breath took keep from breathing the sparkler smoke.

The neighborhood at the back of the house put on a pretty decent show and we didn't even have to leave the driveway to see it. It turned out to be perfect and aside from all of us, there were no crowds and no driving.

Lost Island and Adventureland

Time to wrap up our Iowa posts before more summer fun is upon us.
Just a couple of the fun Destinations that Iowa had to offer us this year.
We spent a day at Lost Island water park in Waterloo. The kids loved it. My kids are pretty big fans of water slides and wave pools etc, so they didn't have much to complain about. Especially with so many cousins and aunt and uncle and even Grandma and Grandpa, who were all willing to take them on a slide or water coaster, or just for a spin on the lazy river.

Mallory, Henry and Claire spent quite a bit of time on the Lazy River with anyone who would go with them. Henry kept trying to convince Mallory to go down a few small water slides with him, but she was not having any of it. Finally he kept saying, "I don't know why Mallory loves the lazy river so much, but she really does."

Gavin and Macy floating along.

Even the babies had some good water fun, the other two took naps on the chairs by the pool, but not Wyatt. The little bit of sleep he allowed himself to get was only in my arms. He did discover how much fun it is to splash though.

Jade is already a beach babe.

The day after the water park we headed to Des Moines to Adventureland. There were a lot of things that I had forgotten about Adventureland from high school, and having kids helped us to find all of the rides that we would have never even looked at as youth. We definitely tried to pack a lot into the day and hit a wide variety of rides.
A nice spin on the carousel, got us all ready to go.

Gavin insisted everyone had to ride this thing called "G Force". Though this had nothing to do with talking Guinea pigs.After only a short time at the park Henry became obsessed with the idea of riding the bumper cars. It even reached a point where he was sitting alone on a bench yelling, "Mom, I Want to do the bumper cars, RIGHT NOW." It was certainly an awesome moment in parenting. But eventually we made it to the bumper cars and everyone had a good time driving around crashing each other.

Grandma's favorite rides are the Teacups...

(not as fun as I had hoped, turns out you can't use that wheel in the middle of the cup to make it turn faster, like the hamburgers on McDonald's playgrounds back in the day)...And the Scrambler. No one got too sick on it either.We were all wearing down part way through the day and Libbie was able to hitch a ride. It's good to still be able to fit in your Mom's stroller when you are almost 10.Just a little video of the baby boys at the end of the day. They were so tired, but still managing to be cute and mostly happy.

Super Long Drive

We just returned from a very long drive to Iowa for the Cardon reunion. We packed in as much fun and driving as possible and got home very worn out. Here are some of the highlights of our trip.
Proof that there were a few moments in the 20 hour drive that Wyatt was not crying.

Bright-eyed in the morning.

This was about the moment when Henry said, "Dad, are you just driving in circles?"

We got there all ready to jump into fun, like basket-weaving with Grandma.

And of course, hitting the Lego stash.

Down on Grandpa's Farm

I went to my first land auction while in Iowa, and learned quite a bit about current farmland prices and about how a land auction actually works. It was very informative and also a little exciting. It might have been boring if we hadn't had an emotional investment in the land being sold. One plot belonged to my cousin that her parents had farmed, about a mile from the house I grew up in. The other plot is what we all know as Grandpa's farm. It was land that had belonged to my great-grandparents and had been passed down. This area has a small creek and with a metal bridge running along the back and we spent many many days down by that bridge in the collective childhood of myself and my siblings. It has always been affectionately know as "The Creek" (or if you are my dad, The Crick).
After the auction, Caleb and I drove out to see the farm one more time. It had been pouring all night and morning and was very wet and muddy. I was dieing to walk to the creek, and luckily, some of our old neighbors drove up and must have seen the look on my face because they offered to loan us some mud boots. Much to Caleb's chagrin, I took them up on the offer and dragged him through the wet and mud to take some photos.

The Bridge.

The fabulous husband that indulged me on this little adventure that left us both blistered and water-logged.

Not sure how long this car has been here, but at least for my life time.

Proof that the corn was "knee-high before the 4th of July." Yep, that is me sticking out my knee.

We also got to hang out with these superb 2nd cousins twice removed.

What a great trip down Memory Lane... or the Lane at Grandpas. Very glad I got the chance to take part in this day and the events that seemed to be a bit like the end of an era for our family.

A Large Happy Family

We took these great pictures on one of our last days in Iowa, but in case our other adventures end up boring our readers.
All 24 of us. And we're even smiling.
The Cousins

Wyatt really loved the photos, especially after he hit his head on the jungle gym.

First Haircut

The insane humidity in Iowa finally forced us to cut off Wyatt's crazy mop of hair. I was hoping to wait until he turned 1, but it just seemed mean to leave him so sweaty. His Dad also got fed up enough to shave the homeless man beard, I think we were all a bit relieved to finally see it go.

I have grown to hate cutting my boys hair, so Papa was nice enough to do the honors. Wyatt didn't seem to mind it for most of the time, but then started brushing hair into his own mouth and got fed up.

More great looking grown up baby photos to come.

Amazing Race Cardon Style

Jeff (Papa) put together a great Amazing Race- Mount Vernon. We had to race around town for an hour looking for clues and doing challenged, that included ice cream eating and some Minute to Win It style events. I think we all had a great time. I totally luck out on my team, Rich had a natural intuition about all of the clues and we found things easily and quickly. We weren't the fastest in the challenges, but not the slowest either. We can in second, but we blame the slow couple that was ordering ice cream ahead of us and couldn't decide what to get.
Regrettably I didn't get a photo of Crystal and Ben's team before the left to start the race, but here are the other teams with our fab matching shirts.
Turns out Mara and Nathan were #1.Me and Rich- Yes I am wearing pink.Caleb and Rachel actively racing.Brennan and Stacy- the strongest team around.

And we Got Very Dirty

Today Caleb and I spent a super romantic afternoon together... We ran the Dirty Dash 5k. If you aren't familiar with the Dirty Dash, it is a race in which you convince several of your closest friends/siblings to join your team and do a trail run complete with obstacles and lots and lots of mud. In this case, we were the siblings/friends and were convince by Nathan and Stacy to join their team, which also included Stacy's brother, Jake, and his wife Hannah. Nathan is the tax guy for the guys that came up with this race, and I am quite sure they are making a killing. There were so many people and they ran the race in different heats all day long.

We had a great time. The course was tough (not sure how anyone runs the 10k) and we got super filthy, there were a lot of steep uphill climbs and just running covered in mud made it interesting. Then there were the obstacles... walls of hay bails to climb over, thick slippery mud to run uphill in, wooden walls to scamper up while being hosed down with a fire hose, and even some tubes to drop and crawl through. Somehow we were mostly just dirty from the waist down until we hit the end... the giant slip-and-slide (which served to remind us how painful a slip-and-slide can be) and the huge mud hole with mudslide at the finish line.
Here's our team a few minutes after the finish, when some of the mud had begun to dry.

The beard was perhaps not the best accessory... Caleb didn't really realize what the race entailed until I mentioned a few things about it on the drive up. He kept saying he couldn't understand what people thought he would be doing when they mentioned him getting mud in his beard, now he knows.

Stacy and Nathan- the Captains of our DBN Tax Team

Hannah and Jake, what a romantic pose.

How could you look at this handsome face and not believe that it was just a magical afternoon?

There were showers, or what you might call water hoses coming down from above with cold water for us to rinse off fully clothed. Since it was maybe 66 degrees in Midway, we got off some of the surface mud and then put on some slightly cleaner clothes to drive home. It was nice to get home and take a warm shower and wash my hair and ears and everything else about 3 times to get the rest off. It is safe to say that good times were had by all.