Instafriday

As I mentioned in my last post, we spent the past weekend in Northeast Iowa camping and visiting my grandparents. We had put camping down on our summer fun list because we usually try and go tent camping once a summer and we figured this seemed like a good weekend to do it. Pike's Peak is a gorgeous park, close to my grandparents, and we have a nice tent that was easy to set up. It was going to be a piece of cake, especially since we were only going to camp for two nights and do no cooking except for campfire s'mores.

 

We were laughing because it had been a few years since we set up our big tent and actually the last time a friend had set it up for us! So luckily, Scott figured it out and it went up really easily. We do have a smaller tent that is a breeze to set up that Scott uses on RAGBRAI and if we go camping just the two of us. 

So once we got the tent set up we were feeling pretty victorious. We checked the radar and things looked good so we headed across the river into town to pick up a few things at Walmart and eat a little dinner. When we came back we did our campfire, ate our s'mores (Michael only wanted the uncooked marshmallws!) and chatted about how awesome camping was and how we really should go more often. We finally settled in for the night around 11:30 (it took Michael forever to get calmed down- he thought sleeping in a tent was so fun and loved his flashlight) and fell fast asleep.

Then it started raining. And thundering. And raining hard. A short storm passed around 12:30 and we stayed dry in our tent. We figured it had passed and we went back to sleep. 

Then it started again around 2:30. This time it didn't let up. It was raining hard and it was LOUD. Raining, raining, raining. We tried to sleep through it but I was mostly just laying there worried and hoping it would be over soon. Finally around 5:30 Scott got up and said, "we are floating!!". The floor of our tent was all squishy with water and it was coming in through the bottom seams of the tent. We peeked outside and saw this:

 

A huge river of water flowing right under our tent. We said, "that's it!" and hopped into the car and arrived at my grandparent's house at 7:00 a.m. It was early but we were happy to have somewhere safe and dry to go with a nice breakfast waiting. We were pretty bummed our camping experience went so poorly but this was definitely a worst case scenario.

As it turns out, that weekend had record rainfall and flash flooding in the whole county and region. My grandparents live right by a little river and by Sunday morning it had overflown its banks and turned the field behind their house into a lake. It was ridiculous. It rained and rained. Probably not the best weekend to go camping, huh?

 

Anyway, the real point was to visit my grandparents and we got a good visit in. I especially enjoyed going for a little drive with my grandma to see the beautiful butterfly garden in town and visit her church. Michael had lots of playing with new toys and being a silly boy. 

  

 

Michael's favorite was this jack in the box sans the jack. It sang the song "Pop goes the Weasel" but we kept asking Michael where the weasel went. He kept saying he needed to find the weasel and wanted to know where that silly weasel was. It was really cute to hear him keep talking about the weasel. 

We took some time on Sunday before heading out to eat lunch at McGregor and visit the cutest shop in the whole world: The Paper Moon. It is a book shop/gift shop with the cutest things and TWO fun cats that live there. One was a girl and very petite and adventurous and the other was a boy who was fat and lazy. Michael thought it was fun to say hi to them and I had fun browsing around. They have a great selection of Iowa books and cat books--two of my favorites! I kept saying I wanted to live there and guess what?? Someone does!!

We've had a good week otherwise, trying to get things done in the house and outside. I have a whole summer list of non fun things for myself that I want to get crossed off such as clean out the pantry and organize every closet/cabinet. I made some headway yesterday as I got my pantry organized and cleared out a whole bag of old tshirts from our laundry room and hall closet. I found some gems in there that made me feel old and thought I better take a photo to document!

I still have about 8 more things on my organizing list that are hard to tackle such as my closet and Michael's closet. I hope if I can get it all squared away this summer it will make the next school year easier if I start from a clean slate. Cleaning and purging is definitely great therapy and getting organized is a free way to make your house feel more spacious and updated.

(I know this is probably riveting to you so I will keep you updated. :o) )

Have a great weekend! Happy Friday !