Back in August, we made a trip down to Council Bluffs, Iowa and Omaha, Nebraska to visit both sets of Chuck’s grandparents. We hadn’t been down there in a long time and since Chuck had the month off (this was when he was taking his paternity leave), it was time to take the trip down.

Luckily, Chuck’s mom was able to come with us. This meant we had an extra set of hands in the back of the car to help with the girls. She read books, gave bottles, had fun new crafts for Maddie to try….it was wonderful! Plus we were really happy we got to spend a bunch of time with her since she spends the winters in Florida.

Linda (Chuck’s mom) stayed with her parents and we set up camp at the other set of grandparents’ house. We had the whole basement to ourselves and didn’t have to worry about a bunch of stuff getting in the way at their houses.

Here’s a rundown of our trip.

Riding in the car. Grandma brought pipe cleaners and made whatever Maddie requested. This time it was a camera.

There were lots of walks. Usually they were spent to kill some time before a meal or to collect some goodies.

Sometimes we used our collected goodies for a craft project.

There was silliness!

Lots of visits to various parks.

And sliding.

And swinging.

And a trip to a farmer’s market where Maddie pointed out all the foods she knew.

And some walking hand-in-hand with great grandma Hays.

Playing with chains attached to walls. (We were making a pit stop to feed Dannie and Maddie decided this chain was loads of fun!)

We ate candy.

We ate ice cream cake.

We played with cousins.

We fed fish at the zoo.

And looked at Gorillas.

We waved at the underwater creatures.

And even got to brush goats.

We played in the sand.

We posed for pictures.

There was more swinging.

We walked across a really cool bridge between Iowa and Nebraska.

Played at another park…where we were surprised that Maddie fearlessly walked to the top of this slide and didn’t skip a beat and slid right down.

And did some more swinging.

We played in in the water.

And played dress-up at the Visitor Center.

Oh, and made cute faces.

We went to a splash pad and played in the water.

And posed for some more pictures.

We were able to get a pretty good family photo of us (considering the kids weren’t in the mood for photos) with grandma and grandpa Schminke (Chuck’s mom’s parents) before we left.

Then we drove home and grandma made more of Maddie’s requests out of pipe cleaners. This time it was glasses!

We had a wonderful trip and it was so fun to bring the girls when they could enjoy many of the fun things there. And it was fun to explore some of the things we’ve never done before. Playing at parks and running around splash pads is usually questionable behavior without children in tow.

Believe it or not, there are actually a bunch of pictures I left out from the trip. If you want to take a look at the ones that didn’t make the cut, HERE is a link to all the pictures from our trip.