We traveled to far off places this weekend. We met up with my sibs, parents, and their fams in Des Moines. We hit the road on Friday morn and the middlest started out the trip with a bang when he declared, “I’m gonna puke”. Thankfully, I was able to nab the fleeing heaves into a HyVee sack and keep it tucked beneath my feet for the remainder of the car trip {note: always keep extra bags in the car. You just never know}. With one kid, we would have cancelled our trip, turned the car around, and stayed in bed the whole weekend but with three kids we were like… meh, it didn’t look chunky. I think it was just a fluke.
J must have felt somewhat better after emptying the contents of his tum as I later found 32 pictures like these on my phone. Via iCloud. From the iPad he held in his little mitts as we carted down the road.
Upon arrival in the booming metropolis that is DM, we found ourselves at an awesome little sculpture garden downtown.
And so we stretched from the car ride. Ran around a bit. Checked out the different pieces. And then quickly loaded back in the car when the middlest made the “I HAVE TO POOP” announcement. We found a bathroom and some rad lunch options at a little downtown eatery that you should totally try if you, too, find yourself in DM, Zombie Burger. And yes… those are homemade flour chips aka the only way to eat restaurant nachos.
We headed to our hotel in West Des Moines for the main event… meeting up with the E cousins. And to say the children were excited about such festivities would be a gross understatement. Much of the crew checked out the Iowa State Capitol while the youngest and I hung back and did some baby yoga.
For the most part, the weekend was full of wearing goggles and looking adorable, shooting up hoops, parking it, and hanging with underwear on our heads.
The highlight, for me, was definitely storming the court with three of my nephews, my brother, the hubs, and my brother-in-law and I am pleased to report that I still don’t got it. I believe the statement “she couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn” was actually invented in reference to my mad bball skillz. My nephews on the other hand, they do got it and they tired this mama out pretty quickly.
The lowlight, if that is even a thing, was that in keeping the puke bag by my feet the whole ride, the germies apparently traveled up my legs and into my belly rendering me down and out with some sort of chill-inducing, weak-body, rumbly tummy crud. And yes. For those of you keeping score at home, this was the second weekend in a row that I’ve been taken ill. And this weekend, I was eastbound and down. So I hit the hay early while the olders threw a rager in the “hangout room”.
Oh, and I suppose the other lowlight would have been the last morning of our adventure when the middlest, still under the weather apparently, had an incident where poop/oozy diarrhea escaped before he could make it to the toilet. Right after he’d hopped down from the toilet. Meaning there were no undies to catch their fall. It smelled amaaaayzing in our room. And thank goodness hotel carpet is so durable. And I wasn’t the one having to wash the hand towels {which I tossed into the trash}. I bet those hotel people looooove us. We’re like a walking frat party. Sans racism, natch.
The only decibel level the entire weekend was LOUD. I’m not really sure that our children ate much with any nutritional value. A bit of hoops were watched. A few beers consumed {by the adults, of course}.
We rounded out the weekend just as we began with the middlest tossing his cookies at the dinner table upon our return home. And all five of us were as tuckered as could be by the time we tucked them into bed at the late hour of midnight 7pm on Sunday.
All in all though, it was a pretty wonderful meet n greet. Especially considering that we weren’t at Disney World. Or a beach. And we didn’t spend a bunch of cash or have anything fancy, outside of pasta salad with arugula {wink wink}. But the kiddos seem to be pretty content with the opportunity to see one another every once in awhile without it being fancy or elaborate. It doesn’t seem to matter where we go with this crew, the beach, someone’s house, or a new city, the kids find plenty of ways to have endless amounts of giggles, smiles, and opportunities to say the word poop, and make mountains of fun memories. Kids are cool like that.
And between the car puke, the diarrhea down the leg, the underwear on the head, and all of the other shenanigans of the weekend, I’d say the memories were made in spades.
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