These are various pictures taken this summer in Iowa.

Katy(posted on Sep 28, 2006 at 10:40 am)

These are the first pictures that Matt and Tracy sent around. They are the earliest of darling little Rian that I have seen.

Katy(posted on Aug 19, 2006 at 10:02 pm)

Our first leg was Oslo to London Heathrow. The flight itself was ok, but Heathrow was a big big pain. (This was before all the bogus terror-plot stuff happened). We had to take 2 busses around the airport, and the signage was less than adequate. We ended up waiting for 2 hours in a mall (“duty free” shopping area), with no gate listed on the announcement board. We came out of the bathroom to find our flight suddenly listed as “last call — proceed immediately to gate”. And proceed to run to the gate, along with 50 or so other people. We waited in the wrong (long) line, their card readers were not working, Ruby pulled one of those heavy divider poles down on herself, we had to check our stroller in a different place… yadda yadda. It was hectic. We were the last people on the plane, and our seat was at the back. Dragging two kids and all their stuff to the back of the plane… arg. But the staff was great. So wonderful (British Airways). The plane was pretty full, but they asked a couple of people to move out of a center row of seats that had some empty ones. That was nice, to have 4 seats to ourselves. The children were able to lay down to sleep, and they both slept about 5 hours of the flight. I even got some sleep!

Katy(posted on Aug 21, 2006 at 12:56 pm)

It was nice to finally be back in Savanna. Everyone was happy to see us, and it was lots of fun to be around family again. I hadn’t seen Arianna since 2001, I think (a long time anyway), and she’s really grown up.

The children were pretty bad with the jetlag. We arrived late in the evening, and they slept in the car. They woke up around 3:30 am and I managed to keep them quiet until 4 am or so, but then they were just too loud and I thought they would wake everyone else up so we went for a walk. It was still dark out, but the sun started to come up soon and we watched the bats fly back to their homes. That was fun. After everyone woke up, we explored great-Grandpa’s garden and the backyard and played with the elephant shaped watering cans that Grandma Susie brought for C and Ruby.

Katy(posted on Aug 21, 2006 at 8:55 pm)

I took some quick snaps of some of grandma’s framed photos that I missed last time (or wasn’t sure if I missed). I didn’t take them outside, so there is some glare on some of them… someday I will get them on a nice scanner, good and proper. Right now I thought it’d be nice to share them like this, though.

Katy(posted on Aug 24, 2006 at 1:30 pm)

We had an afternoon party planned, and all morning we couldn’t decide whether we should have it at the park or at Aunt Thelma’s, because it was threatening to rain. Finally it rained and we settled on Aunt Thelma’s. We spent most of the morning just lazing around the house playing with everyone.

Katy(posted on Aug 25, 2006 at 1:23 pm)

We had a joint Glenn-Katy birthday party, as is our custom. I turned 29 (eep!) and Grandpa turned 85 (wow!). It rained in the morning, so we decided to have the party at Aunt Thelma’s. It was sunny and beautiful in the afternoon (though everything was wet, so it was a good thing we didn’t go to the park). There were lots of people there, and I even met some people for the first time. We had lots of fun at Aunt Thelma’s house, as usual. It was a great party.

Katy(posted on Aug 25, 2006 at 1:26 pm)

After dinner was eaten, cake savored, and presents opened, the children explored Aunt Thelma’s yard.

Katy(posted on Aug 26, 2006 at 11:23 pm)

The children awoke at 2:30am, as they have the previous couple of nights, but I managed to get them back to sleep until 6 or so. Grandpa was up then, so we hung out with him until mom got up and went to the park with us.

Katy(posted on Aug 27, 2006 at 11:43 pm)

Going for a ride on the Missippi is one of my favorite things to do in Savanna. There are a lot of different areas to visit. Grandma and Grandpa used to have a trailer up at the Army Depot (which was closed at the time), and there were many different backwaters and sloughs to visit in that area. It was so beautiful.

I thought C would enjoy On this trip, we just went down to Sebula and looked at the grain elevator and the tug boats and the big old bridge, and then C fell asleep. So we turned around and toured the more naturey areas below the Palisades Park. It’s really beautiful.

Katy(posted on Aug 28, 2006 at 1:03 pm)