Raefield visit & Lauren comes home

Friday, June 27

And so, as the previous post mentioned, the little girls and I picked up Lindsay on Wednesday night. Chris was gone, and obviously, so was Lauren. We were lost. ALL of us! Lindsay said, "it's just not the same w/o Lauren!" Lydia would say, "it's just not the same w/o Lauren!" and then we got in the van to go somewhere and I said, "it's just not the same w/o Lauren!" :) Needless to say, Thursday was a bit of a challenge, and Lauren is clearly the pin that holds our wheels together :)

Dad did come home on Thursday night and all smoothed out a bit ;) And then on Friday, we left for an over-night in Iowa City! We decided to go swimming at ... I can't remember the name, North Liberty maybe?? and the kids had a BALL.

Here we are eating lunch before hand...

Mr. Miles was in LOVE with the water :)

And these three were a hoot!

They basically pretended that they were going off a diving board.

And they just completely shocked me! They were going under-water w/o holding noses, looking at the rings and diving for them... and that makes me remember that the FIRST time they did that was at the Falls in Cedar Falls, which was before this trip, and I should have blogged that first. ;) #waybehind #nevergoingtogetthatfarbehindagain (yeah right!!! ;)

And so w/o Lauren, it was interesting to see Lindsay & Evan be the 'oldest' 2 ;)

over, and over, and over they would climb up & jump in!

Look mom, swimming!

tackling big-bro Evan

Miles & Evan

love, love...

Let's just say that little Ms. LeaAnn almost fell asleep instantly... we stopped off and got ice-cream which revived them enough to stay up until 9pm I believe??? We ended up swimming for almost 4-hours and they loved every minute of it. We had a fabulous trip, and hope to go again soon!!

On Saturday, we packed up to head home, and Chris drove down to get Lauren. It was a happy reunion that day! This is after naps and before Grammy & Papa came over for dinner!

And this was our entertainment for the evening. Lydia was absolutely hysterical ... she was truly 'racing' and would pass people left & right! And LeaAnn and her tractor... priceless.