Pella Tulips

I have been wanting to go to the Pella Tulip festival the entire time we've lived here. It's a tiny little Dutch town about an hour away with all these cute little shops and tulips everywhere in May. Well of course, I finally decide we HAVE to go this time cause it's our last chance and what happens? Freak snow storm. On Cinco De Mayo weekend! Ridiculous.

So I finally got to go out there this morning, the boys and I drove out before 9- perks of them waking so early I guess, we got out before this weird heat wave came through (it's 98 degrees right now!).

It was so pretty and I want to live there! It's almost exactly like Fredericksburg, for my Texas peeps- only Dutch instead of German. I loved all the houses and wished I could have gone into all the museums and antique stores but my stroller and two boys did not allow such a thing. Sad Face.

But we got to see the flowers and get some Almond Letters from the big time bakery there, so it was all good! We topped the trip off with a couple slices of pizza from Casey's General Store (an Iowa gas station that makes pizza too, haha) and a Dr. Pepper and bright red sweaty faces. It was fun and we only had one small tantrum when Ellis didn't want to leave the water fountain (of course).

Tulips all over the town

 "Cheeeese!"

 "OWL!!!!"

 Trek across main square to "owl"

 The "Owl"

 "Here Ellis let's sit Hudson down and help him smell some flowers," says I, hoping to get him to sit for a picture

 Not what I wanted you to do. I thought for sure the police were gonna come after us.

 Hudson knows it's wrong too.

 Dirty lawbreaker.

 Next to the "owl" and the windmill, an ant was the next most exciting thing on the trip.

 He was OBSESSED with this spinning windmill

Of course he needed a windmill cookie!

 Break to play in dirt.

Hello Monday

Or goodbye, since it's almost 9 pm... We survived *barely at points* our first day of 4 weeks with Damon away in Fort Madison (about 3 hours away) and the three of us here in West Des Moines. It was rough at points. Lets just say that I'm unwinding right now with whatever is left in the costco bag of chocolate chips and Real Housewives of Orange County.

We had 4 disgusting diapers, 2 of which were blowouts, one on the carpet (oh yay, right before the landslord is coming to show the place) and one in the crib so everything had to be washed.

We had a somewhat decent library trip and I got ambitions thinking we would walk around the library pond since the weather today was amazing and things were going ok- well that lasted about 5 minutes before a major meltdown ensued. Over what, I'm not really sure, I couldn't tell. Took us a half hour to get back to the car that was 300 yards away.

2 hours of cleaning the apartment for 3 minutes of showings.

Ellis pushing, sitting on, throwing things at Hudson, lots of time out.

Oh and Ellis started climbing out of his crib AGAIN! He did this last week for the first time after his nap- the bed in there was only a foot away from his crib so he kinda just flopped onto it. So I moved the crib to the opposite wall away from everything, and today he decided to be brave. The first time he went ok and the second time he fell head first. What am I supposed to do? I am terrified that if he moves to a real bed he won't nap. Which might kill me dead. I was at least hoping to avoid it til we get to Texas next month.

But they're in bed now and that is great and they are so cute. Ellis loves to sing and sings songs a good hour after we put him to bed every night. His latest favorite is to sing peoples' names along to Twinkle Twinkle. If you are in our family we have sung your name from the rooftops!

And Hudson is seriously a doll. He is so smiley and he is into the funny shaking his head phase that Ellis went through too, I think he likes the feel of it, though it just gives me a headache. He also finally started eating real food- well, baby food and he'll chew on bagels and stuff... So it's a start.

I miss my man. We'll be seeing each other on weekends and more anyways. But nobody better come try any funny business over here, I've got a gun that I have absolutely no hesitation to use on any creep that comes around!

I hear Ellis climbing right now... dang it! TTYL!