A couple of weekends ago, our friends invited us to go with them to the annual tulip festival in Pella. I wasn't sure how thrilled Andrew would be about this. But I just told him we were going to see some pretty flowers and play with Landon!
That was good enough for him! He was thrilled. He just loves his buddy Landon.
It turns out, there were lots of fun things to do there.
Like smell the flowers! (But don't pick one... it's a $100 fine! Yikes! Try explaining this to a kid and then having a heart attack when they grab them to smell them!)
They even had a bouncy house and huge play area for the kids! Andrew and Landon wanted to spend the whole evening there!
But of course, we had to bribe them to take some pictures- perfect photo opportunities and I was slightly "camera happy!"
So many beautiful tulips in all different colors...
Make perfect photo backgrounds... dontcha think?
Of course with this little model, it wasn't too difficult! Thank goodness he's finally learned to sit and say "cheese!" Ahhh, I waited a long time for that!
Even though sometimes he still likes to ham it up and be silly! Ha!
By this time he wasn't thrilled with the family photo shoot idea! But it sure made for a nice background! Ha!
These are our friends Emily and Greg. They had to leave their little one, Logan, at home. Greg and I taught together for a long time and have known each other almost ten years. The best years of my teaching career were (and still are!) when I taught with Greg and our other teaching partner, Lisa. We just had the best time that teachers could have! And I think the kids learned something in the process, too! Ha! We are all at different schools now, but those memories are something I just treasure.
It is just so fun to see our boys playing together and being best buddies.
The food is awesome too! It is a smaller version of the state fair (and if you know anything about the Iowa State Fair, you know what I'm talking about!) They had tons of stands selling all different kinds of things. The Dutch letters were my favorite!
They even had tractors!
The boys were just in heaven!
We found another photo shoot spot on the way back from the tractors, but it was getting dark!
I found myself in slight panic mode, wishing we had seen these earlier in the daylight! Ha! (Andrew won't sit still long enough to use the night setting on the camera! It turns into a blurry mess!)
Luckily I have some luck with photo editing!
We had to head towards our spots to watch the lighted parade. The boys were very excited!
Love this hug!
The parade was so neat! (Some of the floats moved too fast for the night setting too, but I tried!)
Everything was lit up and really pretty!
I thought this ice cream truck was so cute!
This was like that fairy tale...the name of it escapes me (is it Winking, Blinking and Nod, maybe?)
Of course this was the crowd favorite (well, our boys anyway!)
We had such a great time! Thanks Emily and Greg for including us in your evening! Spring is finally here and the weather is getting gorgeous! We've been spending every night playing outside and walking to the park. Andrew can't get enough of being outside with the neighbor kids. We have to drag him in for a bath every night! Summer vacation can't come soon enough! 12 more days!!
