Des Moines Trip Day 1

Our friends Shannon and Dan had two little ones born that we still hadn't gone to visit so by early August we decided it was time to get down to visit.  It's always so good to be in the company of long time friends - we go waaayyy back.

Off we go...

  

Our first stop was the zoo. 

 It was like pulling teeth to get a picture here, but we finally got a good one :)  

 There was so much to see at the zoo and the boys were excited to see it all.  Although it was a busy day at the zoo we were still able to get a close up look at just about everything!

We had a fun time on the 2 minute train ride :)

 Oops, we saw the "do not sit on the cow" sign AFTER we took this picture.  

 These were my favorite animals at the zoo.  They were HUGE!  Seriously huge. 

 And this was Titus' favorite part, a big tunnel into the monkey cages.

Our first family of 5 trip to the zoo was a success!

After the zoo we made it to Shannon & Dan's house.  Titus was having a bit of a "baby complex" when he realized he wasn't the baby in the house.  :)

 The daddy's were having video game time, but with a baby in their lap.  Love it! 

While the mommies took the big kids to the park.  Look at these monkeys!

And home to cool off with a popsicle.  Where else would you eat a popsicle than the sand box inside the dog kennel? :)

 We set up a movie in the basement for the big kids.  

 Look at him with both babies! :)

 I sure wish we would have attempted a picture with all 8 children under 7 but I didn't even think of it.  We had a successful night sleep with our whole family sleeping in the basement in one big room.  We even got the kids to sleep and had some "grown-up" time together!

Enjoying every last minute

Summer went by soooo fast.  It feels like we had so much fun to have and so little time.  I feel like our whole family did a great job of enjoying all of the summer days that we had!  

We had lots of days playing on the trampoline.

 And even more days spent climbing our awesome tree in the yard.  

 Mark and I even got to celebrate our anniversary -- and then we went to our friend LeAnna's house simply to avoid bed time :)  11 years already! 

Many days were spent at the park... 

We made it to several fairs to visit the laser tag guys :)  And enjoy the rest of the events going on.

 Ate lots and lots of hot dogs at the baseball game! 

 And were wild and crazy around the house. 

 We went to the petting zoo several times and chased the chickens and other birds. 

 And had lots of parties at Auntie B's house.  

 We played in the driveway with our bikes, scooters and tractors. 

 And even made it on some longer bike rides.  (Usually with Titus on the back of my bike, Levi on the tag-a-long and Isaiah on his own, but a couple times we used this trailer instead.)

 We even snuck in a few pizza parties at the park when the day got away from us (or I had to work all day and wanted a fun treat!)

All in all, we had a great summer making all kinds of fun family memories. It's hard to believe that it has come and gone already!