father's day, hearts & VBS

Right when we got back from our vacation, we celebrated Father's Day that weekend.

We went to Zeno's with Ga Ga and Papa and then came back to our house for cake and presents.  We are so blessed the kids have 3 special men in their life- a wonderful daddy, Papa and Grandpa!  

Just catching up with more summer fun lately- one day Ga Ga came and spent the night and we had a movie night and watched Finding Nemo.

We had to see it before watching Finding Dory!  Check out these reclining movie seats! #yesplease

This new theater opened nearby and I think I won't ever be able to go to a normal movie theater again!  Ha!  This was AMAZING.  We brought our blankets and kicked back!  And we all loved Finding Dory!

Angie and I have a summer bucket list, so we crossed off painting at Messy Missy's one day!

The kids love to do this.

Payton and Kerigan were excited to paint Dory!

Andrew had his last baseball game at the end of June.

Payton and Angie came to watch.  After the game Payton came running up to him and said "Good game, Andrew!"  So sweet.

Baseball sister.

Of course we had to hit Culvers after the game!  These three are so silly.

We celebrated with our heart friends at the Help A Heart Silent Auction and dinner.  I made this puzzle piece of Andrew for the tables a few years ago and they use them every year.  He was excited to find his puzzle piece!

Rapunzel was there, which made this girl super happy!

Local mascots come and interact with the kids too!

I love that she is still mesmerized by princesses.  #clingingtotheseyears

Heart friends Emily and Grace!

Then the kids went to VBS with many of their friends during the last week in June.

The theme was Egypt and they learned a ton about the story of Joseph and Pharaoh.

Sweet Parker.  Every night the pastor cooked a delicious meal for everyone!  It was awesome and a bummer when the week was over!  Ha!

Angie's husband, Chad, played Joseph all week.  Andrew came home every night so excited and telling us so many stories.  He loved learning from Chad.  We are so blessed to have these volunteers and friends that minister to our children!

Lily and Kerigan!

This was Andrew's tribe group

Kerigan's tribe

The kids built this wall and they were so proud of it!

After VBS my girl was the only one that wanted ice cream with me so we went!

Ev's with my girl!

And as if these two haven't had enough togetherness, we had Payton over for a play date before VBS one afternoon.  They had so much fun tumbling on Kerigan's mat!

Then they wanted the cleaning supplies out and listened to the Annie soundtrack on the iPad and danced!  Ha!  It's so funny because I used to play Annie as a kid and clean my dad's garage floor.  At least they didn't ask to go in the garage!  Ha!

Then they played princesses! 

They definitely kept busy and entertained themselves for the afternoon!  I love these sweet girls!

One afternoon we had a picnic with Ga Ga in the park!

 We have been having way too much fun with Snapchat these days... ha!  Nothing can kill an afternoon more than Snapchat.  We always pull it out when we're ready to just sit and hang out and relax.  It's so fun to have nothing to do!  #welovesummer #weshouldbepacking

I think I'm finally caught up with June updates!  Onto July fun next!

road to nationals {city museum}

This is one of our favorite places!  We love the City Museum!  It is so unique and creative, an amazing place to explore and make your brain work in such a fun way!

We woke up early the next morning and got there super early when they opened so we could have a smaller crowd, and beat the heat as much as possible!  You may notice my kids are in jeans when it was like 100 degrees.  I think you'll see that it's because they spend a lot of time crawling around on their hands and knees!

When they opened we headed straight for the rooftop!  While it was still cooler (in the 80s) and not too many people.  Parts of the museum are outside and part inside.

There just aren't a lot of words to describe it.  Last year when we visited the first time I had researched it and was freaking out about it.  I almost didn't want to go, but it looked so intriguing I thought we had to try it out.  And I'm so glad we did!

Tunnels everywhere that lead all over the museum.

Stepping stones across water... figure out how to get across!

An old school bus on top of the building!

On our way back inside,  to head to the other outside section, we got distracted by the caves...

It was nice and cool in here!

More tunnels...

My camera wasn't doing the best in the dark, but this gives you an idea.  They suggest bringing flashlights for the caves, which we used the ones on our phones quite a bit!

The tunnels in these caves are just amazing.  The kids would enter one, and disappear.  Then after a while they'd show up in another place, sometimes another level of the museum!

Finally we rounded them up and headed to the outside section in the front of the museum.

More unique and crazy structures to climb on!

And pretty much everything ended up near a slide so they would slide down, then climb back up.

The fun part is figuring out where the entrance to all the slides are!  Do you see them climbing across the cage up there!?  They are heading to the slide on the left.

And on their way down!

Kerigan above, Andrew below

Hello!

She is extremely high off the ground right now!

Here he was inside an old airplane, also on the tenth story of the building.

Kerigan was a lot more brave this year and wanted to do everything her brother was doing.  She did a pretty good job keeping up with him!

Up she goes!

Exploring the castle!

I am not kidding, this place has everything you can think of.

Back inside we found these awesome slides

They have a little train ride that takes you around through these little settings that are so fun to look at.

I loved this little camper!  We definitely saw things and noticed things we didn't notice the last time!

My baby going down the monster slide!

After this I think it was about 15 minutes before we saw them again!  Each time we were in a new area we would just sit down and tell them where we were so they could find us!  They were really good about checking in often.

While we were waiting for our pizza at lunch time, they played some more!  Do you see Andrew?

One last climb before heading home!

We timed it so we would be in Iowa City for dinner before heading home.  Here we are about an hour away!  We were ready for showers and bed in our own beds!

We had an awesome vacation celebrating our girl.  It was fun to have an excuse to travel this summer as we had to postpone our Disney trip due to our move next month.  Too much to pack and get ready for our transition.  This was a nice way to begin the summer before the craziness begins!