April highlights

My mom and I took a trip with the kids to Iowa mid-April to visit some family and had quite the adventure! Here was our first "rest stop" which was just a slightly rural gas station where there was some fun exploring area for the kids.

Of course I had some GREAT intentions of taking lots of pics and documenting everything......which didn't happen :) But I have to share our grand adventure. As we were exiting the hwy in a not so great part of town in the Kansas City area mom's engine just dropped the gear. No matter how she tried to change (even reverse) nothing was catching. So we found some guys at the QT a block away, which was why we were getting off in the first place, to get gas there, and asked them to help us push the car into the parking lot. They towed us with a chain into the parking lot where we started checking things and making phone calls. Long story short 3 1/2 hours later we were on the road in a rental van while mom's van was towed to a dealer to get a new transmission! Lovely start huh :)

Well after making it to Des Moines and staying the night with my cousin we headed to the capitol building the next day for a tour. The Zipper was full of excitement

as he spotted this....pretty huh!

Among the many things we learned there I think one of the coolest was the fact that the exterior dome is "painted" with real gold. It's a coating that if you scrapped it all together would be about the size of a baseball....wow, that's a small amount to spread over that whole dome! I believe they said it has to be redone about every 20 years. It takes about 2 years to do it because weather conditions have to be exact for them to do it in.

The 2 younger boys needed a nap so my mom and cousin took the older 2 to the military museum on the base where she works. Among other things the kids loved the para-scope.

And the jump area of a plane.

I'm just now realizing I didn't really take any pictures of family or other activities we did :( We also went to the Music Man Museum in Mason City and visited with my Aunt and other family there. It was a great trip and we look forward to doing it again sometime :)