Girls' Vacation

While Jarod is at National Speech contest with Michaela in Birmingham, Alabama, the girls and I decided to take a little vacation of our own. We left home on Sunday morning (late morning) and made it to Omaha before having to stop! We had a gourmet meal at McDonalds and decided it was time to chuck our old dvd player that would play only play one movie ~ Hello Kitty! We purchased a new dvd player at Walmart, grabbed some guilt-free snacks and headed on our merry way. Our next stop was about 100 miles later. That was all the further I could make it after my refill of Coke at McD. We did manage to make it to Grinnell, IA without any other stops.

We have been staying with the Mavin's since Sunday. Laurel and Lexi are only 9 days apart, and their habits and mannerisms are spookily similar. Brea is 3, and has the best vocabulary of any 3 year old I've known. Needless to say, the girls have played, played, played. Sunday we just got everyone acquainted and walked to the local ice cream shop at the end of the block. Yum! 4 kids, 3 dogs, and 3 adults took some acquainting. Yesterday I attended Jenn's gentle yoga class, and was the youngest student by about 25 years or so! The girls were entertained by the daycare at the studio. Then while Jenn taught another class, the girls and I got coffee and treats at the coffee shop and played at the park. Yesterday afternoon brought lots of relaxation, an early evening t-ball game, and some homemade granola in the evening.

This morning Jenn and the girls introduced us to Tiny Circus. I wanted to see what this was all about. It is a group of very artsy people who are interested in traveling by modified Airstream campers to do Artists in Residency. Their "medium" is animation. So they have people rebuilding Airstreams to meet their specific needs. They also have people working on animations. It is called Tiny Circus because they would travel in their "Mini-Airstreams" as a circus would. Very interesting! How I long to be that carefree! The girls were able to create some monsters on paper and then were aided in creating an animation of their monsters! They were very, very pumped to see their monsters turned into a 5 second cartoon!

This afternoon we hired a babysitter for the girls while we shopped around downtown Grinnell. We started at Basil Thai restaurant for some basil spring rolls and pad thai. We then headed directly to the quilt shop where I could not resist a beautiful yard of Amy Butler fabric, and also got some "boy" batiks for burp cloths. That was to be the extent of my purchases. That lasted until we got to this little craft consignment shop where I fell in love with a little black desk and chair for the fine price of $30. So once again I will be hauling home a piece of furniture in the back of my van! But it will look great in my kitchen!

The girls are finishing up our stay here with the making of a popsicle stick puppet show. I am trying to finish the pillowcases that were supposed to have arrived completed, but didn't. One more to go. It has been a wonderful time reconnecting and I think it is safe to say the girls are occupied enough they aren't asking for their Dad - yet! We head off to the Gudeman's in Goodfield, IL tomorrow! Can't wait to see more friends!