My week in Iowa has come to a close and I’m writing this blog from a plane, heading South to the heart of Texas. What a jam-packed week it’s been in Van Horne! Usually, my trips to Iowa are much less chaotic, but it was chaos of the good kind.
My post-trip blog post is seriously long, so I decided to split it in half – I’ll post the 2nd part in a day or two!
Wednesday
Shortly after I arrived we headed straight to where Amber calls the ‘smoothie place’.
It’s this Herbalife clinic place where you get a body scan done and take a shot of aloe, have a protein shake and some raspberry tea while you read the results.
It was definitely interesting, albeit a little scary to see the numbers looking back at me. Can’t argue with technology! (eek!) The guy said that I do have more lean body fat than a lot of people which was good to hear and according to the print out, I have less ‘bad’ weight to lose than I thought – which will decrease a little if I manage to turn some of it into ‘lean’ body weight in the mean time.
After the body scan we walked next door to the tanning salon where I luckily (or unluckily if you’re my credit card) managed to pick up the ‘5 spray tans for $50’ deal that I’d been meaning to pick up (I say luckily cause it was on the last day of the offer). We both got a tan before heading home where I took a nap (I was utterly knackered!) before Amber and I went to Michaels to pick up some things.
For dinner, I had my first Chicago deep dish pizza at Zoey’s Pizza place – it was delicious. Emily joined us after a while and we sat giggling until we were almost kicked out of the restaurant cause they were closing! Lol! It was a great night and my cheeks hurt from laughing!
I can’t remember what we did on Thursday other than Amber made me some divine chocolate chip cookies and Aaron made me one of the best non-restaurant steaks I’ve ever had. Yes, I ate a lot on the trip! Haha!
Friday brought with it my typical shopping bonanza in Iowa (I can hear Col crying as I write this).
I can always find great shopping deals when I’m out with Amber (much to Colin’s dismay! Lol!!).
I picked up a lot of stuff, most of which I didn’t need but I got it anyway! I did take care of a few Christmas presents and some wedding shopping though so it was ‘justifiable’ lol! It was also the day I tried Red Lobster for the first time – which was delicious and I’ll definitely be going back to!
Saturday was ‘punkin day’!
We loaded miss Averie up into the van and headed up to Animosa where the annual pumpkin festival takes place, of course stopping in Walmart on the way for Aunty Las to do even more shopping!! Although this time it was for card to print our wedding programmes (no really, it was!!).
At the pumpkin festival, they had a hall that’s got HUGE pumpkins, watermelons and other kinds of large veggies on display – vying for a prize for the biggest and best.
Across the street they have a lady sitting carving pumpkins in one room and the room next door has her creations on display – these were impressive! The room is dark but for the candles inside the pumpkins and the carvings were fantastic! They’d carved Elmo (Averie’s favourite of course!), Spock, Marvin the Martian and Snoopy, to name but a few.
When we finally pried Averie away from the ‘Melmo’ punkin we headed up the street to find a spot for the parade. I told Amber that I’d stand in line to get lunch while she found us a good spot to watch the parade from, 40 minutes later I joined her and we ate while watching the floats and displays go past us.
Averie had come prepared for the parade, she’d brought her bucket with her and for the first while, spent the parade staking a claim to her candy and putting it in the bucket, the rest of the time she spent trying to eat it! LOL!
It was good fun, lots of candy being thrown to the crowd, lots of farm-esque displays, sports cars and some kids things like Boy Scouts and a High School marching band with baton twirlers.
When the parade was over, we bundled a very tired baby girl into the car and continued on our merry punkin way. Next stop was the pumpkin patch! When we arrived, Averie was fast asleep, so much so that it took for her to see the entire stretches of pumpkins before she woke up instantly – completely buzzing with excitement.
She was adorable, between the pumpkins and the animals I don’t think she quite knew what to do with herself! The three of us each picked out our own pumpkins to take home and carve, we saw some farm animals (Averie fed a few of them, making sure that they each got some food, not just the animals closest to her! It was so cute!) and then we went into the farmhouse where they were selling baked goods, I picked up some pumpkin bread to take home to Col and Amber finally got to buy her pumpkin bars which she had been looking forward to all week!
We bid adieu to the pumpkins and continued back into Cedar Rapids where our next pit stop was Amber’s office where we went to print out our some stuff.
Ok, I know I rabbit on about how great Amber is all the time but the unsung hero of our wedding, would most have to be her multitalented other half Aaron. He designed our invitations and our programmes (among other things) and for those of you who haven’t seen either, I’ll post pictures once the big day is behind me.
The programmes took a lot less time than we thought they would and they turned out better than we could have hoped. They absolutely rock! I love them and can’t wait to get home and show them to Col – they’re one of the ‘hockey themed’ parts of our wedding and I’m just thrilled at how they came out!
Averie pottered about on her own while her mummy printed out what she needed to and before long we were heading to dinner at a nearby chinese restaurant before going home. At home, the work didn’t stop there, I put the pages of the programmes together, Amber scored them and then I stapled them.
It sounds boring and time consuming, but considering we devoured almost an entire bottle of apple pucker while doing them, the time went in pretty quickly and at the end of the night I had a box of completed programmes – something else to check off my to-do list!
