Trip to Iowa

A short time ago, we took our last "before Anna comes" trip to Iowa. We hadn't been up to visit since January, so it was great to visit. Since January, my sister Sarah and wife Stephanie bought my dad's old house. They've put a lot of work into the house and we enjoyed seeing the progress. Here is Eli with Aunt Sarah and their dog, Dillon:

Aunt Sarah is a golf professional and teaches lessons. She had these hula hoops to help teach kids how to hit the ball. Eli loved them and Aunt Sarah let him take one home:

It was a short trip (well, it was supposed to be, I'll touch more on that later) but we decided to head to Blank Park Zoo for the day on Sunday. It was a beautiful day to go and in fact, we almost got a little warm! Here are pictures from the day (and I'm glad there were many eyes to watch Eli as he was in heaven running around...thus the double stroller purchase for our excursions to the zoo here in KC :):

Holly & Eli braving the bridge:

Pretty bird:

"Water fall!"...Eli loves them:

Cool aquarium:

And a fun park!:

They had a coi pond and boy were these fish crazy!! It was actually kinda gross watching them devour the food and swim all over each other:

The petting zoo:

This goat was very pregnant (Eli is covering up her belly)...we had a bond :):

Hello Mr. Llama!:

Before the sea lion show:

What are you doing, monkey?:

Just walkin' along with no care in the world about whether he left us all in the dust or not!!:

Kitty kat:

Beautiful tiger:

And lions:

What are they looking at?:

Ground hogs of course!:

Sea otters were up close & cute!:

With Eli, each sister has a picture with Eli in my belly. For Anna, I wanted to do the same but this time included my 2 sisters and sister-in-law...yay!:

We also visited with Grandpa & Lola, took a walk around Aunt Sarah & Aunt Steph's neighborhood with Dillon, and played at a park. Good times! Unfortunately, the good times ended there. On the way home, I noticed the car temperature guage was almost to hot. My car has overheated once before, so I got off on the next exit as it was not cooling down. Thankfully we stopped at a gas station 30 minutes from Des Moines and were able to get a tow truck and have Holly pick us up to bring back to Des Moines. It became a frustrating ordeal as we ended up having to stay until Tuesday evening in my step-mom's car as they were taking FOREVER to figure out what exactly was wrong with my car. We finally were able to meet half way on Saturday to trade back cars as they finally were finished with my car on Friday....5 days!! The bill wasn't fun, but less than it could have been, so that's good.

I'll post again soon about other fun things Eli & mommy have been up to: Fairy Tale Village, Fritz's train restaurant, a REAL puppet show, and a trip to the fire house!!!