If you’ve followed this blog for any amount of time you know we adore sharing Guttenberg, Iowa with our loved ones! It’s such a special place to us. Time feels like it slows down when you’re there, creating more opportunity for connection and fun. And it helps that our family has property right on the Mississippi River and fun toys (boats and jet skis!).

At the end of our visit on Monday (getting ahead of myself!), Mom told Dunja she’d love to see them again. Dunja replied something like, “we’ll be back in the US,” and I jumped in to clarify, “she means here specifically—she wants you to come back here!” We all do; we had such a great time together! (But of course, I’d happily settle for seeing them anywhere, ha ha.)

Saturday, August 16th

Okay, picking up where we left off, after visiting the tailend of the fly-in, we got back to the house and got ready to head out to the beach.

The kids, especially Nicholas, were very excited about trying out the jet skis.

We spent a lot of time riding around!

Then we came back to the beach to hangout and play in the water!

Edited to add; we saw multiple bald eagles while at the beach! This happens often here, but it was especially cool cause ‘Merica.

We honestly only went back to the house because we saw some storm clouds and thought, okay, we better clean up, head back, and make dinner.

Those clouds rewarded us with a rainbow!

There was an intense storm that night that we went out to watch from a distance. Then after we went to bed it blew over the patio table and shattered it. Oops. Back to earlier in the evening though.

I came up with a super midwesterner menu for the weekend, that of course, included corn on the cob! So everyone helped husk it and experienced getting the little silks stuck all over their fingers. Fun times.

We had burgers and corn for dinner and played Wits & Wagers and joked around trying to pronounce German words (something about a Ultraschallreinigungsmaschine). It was a fun night!

Sunday, August 17th

Sunday started with rock painting.

Nicholas painted Steven!

Then we went downtown to show them town.

Obviously starting with caffeine drinks!

Guttenberg has a bunch of German street names and some street art so I enjoyed having them pronounce it for me, and take tons of photos!

We got to see Lock & Dam #10 in action!

And it was a zillion degrees and muggy again (we had told them about dew point so we kept guessing and checking the dew point throughout the trip) so we headed back to the house to eat, then go out on the water.

On the beach we had very important discussions, such as on the 7 hills I’d die on (it’s since been upgraded to 8), and what “never trust a fart” means. Ha. We also saw a baby turtle!

We had delish bulgogi tacos for dinner that were a huge hit, then played First to Worst. Dunja’s family liked it so much we ordered a copy for them to take back to Germany.

This game is so fun. As the judge, you get 5 random items you secretly rate 1 (best) to 5 (worst) then the group tries to guess how you rated them, together. It (surprising?) gets kind of heated. Dad jumped in for a round and everyone was arguing about his order. Then Clarissa did a round and Steven said her parents had it all wrong, and changed it. My snis took a photo of how they’d ordered it (seen above) and they had it 100% right! Everytime we get all 5 right we did a group high-five, but Steven was left out of that one, jokingly. Ha ha ha.

Monday, August 18th

The weather was overcast and meh when we got up Monday. Wah!

So we got to painting again. This time, Steven painted Nicholas:

Nicholas and I helped Dad put his jet boat away.

When we got back, Snis, Christian, and I went out for donuts and a bit of shopping.

Then after breakfast we went out on the golf carts to tour the island a bit! Add a golf cart as thing #3 Nicholas got to drive for the first time on this trip.

After our ride we decided it would be a great idea to blow up this float and float down the river.

We played a few games of telephone while floating,

and also jumped out a bit to swim.

The littlest kids got pretty bored, so Dad picked them up on the jet ski. Then we got way too far out so Clarissa and Christian and I swam us in. We were still too far away so Dad tried to help with the jet ski. LOL. It was a mess, and so fun. We finally got to shore a few houses down.

We had a super late lunch, then packed up the car. Christian rode with Dad in the coupe (Dad brought it up special for Nicholas—he rode in it the day before!),

then we took that family photo at the top of the post, and headed out!

We stopped in Balltown at the scenic overlook:

Then in Monroe for dinner. It delighted me so much they had a holiday tree with USA stuff on it. Ha ha ha.

When did two meals at Burger King become $27 though? Yikes.

We got home late! Near 10:00? Not too late to cuddle on Ned though. Aww. Or too late to go to a WWM class in the morning. More on that in the next post!