Sisters, Sisters!

I love visiting my family.  The bulk of our vacation money goes towards visiting family.  This summer I was blessed to visit all of my sisters in one way or another.  I love that I get to see Lois on almost a monthly basis.  I saw my sister Lena in June and then was able to visit Stephanie and Deborah in July.

I drove by myself with my kids to Indiana.  Some parts of the drive are so pretty!  This is somewhere in West Virginia. 


Last year when we went to Mississippi we stopped at a Speedway gas station to fill up the tank.  We ended up getting their slushies for a great deal.  I told the kids if they saw an exit sign for a Speedway around lunch time we would stop again and get their slushies.  They saw one and we stopped!


We arrived at Stephanie's Saturday night.  She had a baby about a week before that.  We came to help out a little and snuggle with cute baby James.  After church on Sunday we walked over to the temple right next to their church building.  It's so amazing that their church is right next to the Indianapolis Temple! 


Sunday afternoon cousin time. My parents had been at Stephanie's for several days and I took them to the airport that morning.  Lois and I were there together for Saturday and Sunday. 




Sweet baby James! 


Jeff's birthday was on Sunday and Lois made an AMAZING chocolate peanut butter cake.  Yum, yum!  Lena's birthday was that day too.  I wish I could have celebrated with her too in Mississippi, but the presents and phone call hopefully sufficed.


The single candle for the 35 year-old Jeff!




Shanna, Elden and Maggie had a fun time playing together.












My phone doesn't take good pictures in dark lighting.  We really need to buy a regular camera.




Monday morning the Heits took off for Iowa.  We joined them there later in the week.  Haley and Clark went with them up to Iowa.  The rest of us stayed to help Stephanie.




The kids had fun playing games, swimming, holding baby James, and helping around the house and yard.  Well, I'm not sure if they enjoyed the weeding we did for about an hour, but Cal thought the Gerla's lawn mower was pretty cool.  He liked that the front wheels were motorized and would pull the mower.  He mowed their back yard and said it was the most fun he'd ever had mowing a lawn.


I can understand chocolate covered pretzels, but chocolate covered goldfish? 






We went to their neighborhood pool, which was really fun.  Maggie came for a little bit then wanted to go home.  Andy came and picked her up while we stayed longer.  One of the dad's at the pool was doing some sort of judging with the kids going off the diving board.  Shanna was in on it.  He would tell them to do something, like their best flip, and he would score them on how they did.  Shanna loved it.


That evening we took Maggie to get an ice cream cone.  We stopped and bought some after swimming for us.  When we arrived back to their house, we went back out with Maggie and got her one too.


I wish we could have stayed at least one more day with Stephanie.  It was Clark's birthday though and I wanted to be with him on that day.  We left Stephanie's house early Wednesday morning to head to Iowa to visit my sister Deborah.  We had a fun time in Iowa with them.  One of our outings we stopped at an art place and picked out a ceramic.  We are going to paint them next summer at Deb's reunion she is hosting.  It was a fun store!




That evening on Clark's birthday we went to the local city pool.  It's the coolest city pool I've ever been too! Lots of slides, a lazy river and lots of other fun water features.  I'm looking forward to going there next summer too!
















We spent several hours at the pool.  The weather was fantastic and it wasn't that busy either.  That night we ended with yummy cake, ice cream and a happy birthday song! 


The next day we went bowling.  It's neat because their bowling alley does free bowling for kids in the summer.  Last time we went bowling was a couple years ago at a reunion.  We loved going again. 










We also walked downtown where Deb lives.  It's such a cute downtown.  I loved this chocolate store.


Too funny about the chocolate corn.  Fitting for Iowa, right?!  I bought two for Deb.




Some knives Clark wanted to take pictures of to show his Uncle Daniel.  What do you think, Daniel?




I thought this soap was funny.  Sorry, not to offend animal lovers......


Lee and I are now the owners of these pretty paintings!  The owner's husband of this shop painted them.  If we can't find a place in our home to put them, we'll put them in Lee's office somewhere.  His waiting room doesn't have any art in them.








That night we had a tailgating dinner before a baseball game.  Not sure if people tailgate for baseball games, but we did!  We saw a farm team play that night.  Thanks to Deb's bank we all got in for free!






We also got free t-shirts. 




I loved being able to visit Deborah and Stephanie!  Thank you sisters for the awesome visits!  Wish we lived closer together to visit more often.  A few times a year will have to suffice.