We’ve been back for almost a week! Let’s get this river trip recap going!

Let’s see if I can NOT make it a million words, maybe just a bunch of photos? No promises.

My family has been vacationing in Guttenberg, Iowa for many decades – since I was very small – and we love sharing the town with our loved ones. Last year Val, Tiff, and Tiff’s oldest came out in July, and this year they brought more of their families!

There are a few takeaways I want to get across in this post, in no particular order:

1. I’m so grateful to have friends who want to haul their families from all over the states to go to a small town in Iowa with me and Steven and my family for a week. It was really special to have them there on my 40th birthday! I felt so loved!
   • A sidebar of that is feeling grateful to have friends who 100% accept and love me and my family for who we are. I never have any weird relationship worries or doubts with these two and it feels so so good to just be me, and openly communicate with one another.
2. I’m extremely grateful for all my snister does to make this trip so successful. She planned all the meals, got most of the groceries, and most of the meals set up. She also just generally keeps things organized. And! She and her husband let us use their boat and jet ski and golf cart!
3. I’m very grateful my parents open the house to us, and let us play with their toys (jet skis, golf cart, boat).
4. It was so so so so nice to have a week with no agenda. Just relaxing, enjoying each other. No schedule. Nowhere to be. No rushing from thing to thing. Just taking things slow. Sleeping in. Doing things whenever we felt like it. Being disconnected (hardly any internet). I needed that and it felt so good.

And that basically describes our week! We were there four full days, and three of them we lazed around, then went out to the beach in the afternoon, and one of the days we drove to Dyersville to see the Field of Dreams movie site.

I won’t break it down too much further day by day cause zzzzzz, but I will organize these photos by day and share some logistics!

Sunday

Tiff and her family arrived Sunday afternoon and we all hung out at our place.

Monday

On Monday we left our house late morning in two cars, and picked up Val and her husband at the Milwaukee airport then made our way to Guttenberg, stopping in Madison to have lunch with Rachel! I loved that my favorite people got to meet each other.

We were caravaning, but somehow the boys got separated from us and ended up going through Prairie du Chien to get to Guttenberg, while we came up through Dubuque.

We drove through a lot of rain that day, and I was so pleased it was basically the only rain all week. We had sunny humid days that were perfect for playing on the water.

Ella is a vibe! I need that shirt.

Tuesday

Tiff, Val, and I met through rock painting, so we spent some of our free time painting, and sometimes other people would join us! Tiff painted 20 rocks total on the trip, and Val and I each painted 9.

Wednesday

Wednesday was my birthday! I was up early and painted, then Dad took me on a jet boat ride.

I painted and opened presents, we went and got coffee,

Rachel got me this sash and crown to wear in Europe (since that was my 40th present to myself) and I kept forgetting! Ugh! But I LOVED wearing it on my birthday.

then did beach time,

and ended the day with burgers and a loaded french fries bar and cake!

Thursday

On Thursday we went to the Field of Dreams movie site. It was so freaking hot and sunny. I got a tan on my sandals just from being outside for an hour. It was cool to bat on the field. It was a suggested donation of $20 (per car) to get in then $20 to tour the house. We skipped the house. Val and I both researched it and could not find anything about the house cost and were kind of annoyed. But whatever.

I’ve driven through Dyersville hundreds of times and that was the first time I got out and went onto the field. It seems like a better fall activity, and I wish we would have been out on the water since it was so damn humid.

Oh wait! We did go on a boat ride, I forgot.

We had a lot of fun playing games that night – What Do You Meme? and some other strange question game my snis found with highly inappropriate questions that I loved asking around my mom to make her uncomfortable muah ha ha.

Friday

I ran with Dad in the morning! I started the trip with a cold (which I combined with the cold my snis’s family had and gave to everyone, sorry) and was taking it easy, but felt well enough Friday to run.

I’ve said it before but my colds follow a typical routine since I’ve had COVID. Day 1 is scratchy throat, 2 is runny face, 3 is dry cough, 4 is productive cough. So when I woke up sick Sunday (and told everyone I did) I knew I’d feel better by day 3. It followed that schedule exactly. I also knew Steven would get it two days later which is why he’s not in a lot of photos. Poor guy. He stayed back a lot and rested.

ANYWAY.

We floated down the river in the late morning, which was a lot of fun!

Then we went to the beach in the afternoon. We had a fun evening of chatting and golf cart rides. Tiff’s kids went over to my snister’s for a gaming evening with her kids and they all had fun (the kids got along so well!).

Fun fun fun. Come up with a better word, Kim.

Saturday

We left by 10:00 am and drove Val and her husband to ORD to fly home and dropped Tiff and her fam off at friends (they flew home Sunday). Steven and I got home around 4:30? I was asleep at 9:30, got up at 6:20 and gave the cats their wet food, then went back to bed until 9:30. I NEVER sleep like that, but I obviously needed it.

Oh! When we were leaving we saw so many cool crop dusting applications – like a drone (after Steven had just been telling me about crop dusting drones), and a helicopter and plane that flew right over us on the highway.

It feels like this is the quick and dirty recap, without all the little stories and inside jokes that wouldn’t be entertaining to you guys anyway. Like how Val’s husband is also Steve, so we called Tiff’s husband (not named Steve) Steve-o so we could just call them all an iteration of Steven. Or how we did not know our nephew Thomas would be there, but he provided so much comic relief and everyone is requesting he is there again next year. Or the very long conversation about a certain medical condition. And so on.

Eh, maybe I will write myself some private stories and share some too. The short of it is that we had a wonderful time together; it was exactly what I needed, and I cannot wait to do it again. I love these people all so much. The only bad part was the stinking cold and that mostly everyone got a version of it. UGH. As our nephew William said “I wish sick wasn’t a thing.” I told him maybe he’d be a scientist when he grew up and make “sick” go away.