Saturday morning, Heather, Riley and I loaded up the Mariner and headed up to Orange City. Rob and Erin have been doing some home projects and one of those projects is to get the nursery ready. They had painted the walls and wanted me to paint a tree in the corner. This was the only weekend that worked before the baby is due, so we left Des Moines around 6:30 Saturday morning. We got to Orange City around 10:30. I started in on drawing and painting the tree, Rob was busy working on the kitchen cabinets and Erin was working on the trim work in the nursery, so Heather took the girls up to the park to play.
After the park, the girls came back to the house and prepared a picnic lunch for us to eat in the backyard.
After lunch, the girls jumped on the trampoline. What comes with the trampoline, thumbs up and...
...staticy hair!
There was also a round of tickle fights!
...and more static
...and plenty of laughs!
After the trampoline, the girls headed inside for a little beauty shop with some nail polish.
Since we won't be up there next weekend for Gracie's birthday, we brought some presents, balloons and cookies to celebrate Gracie's birthday a few days early!
She was super excited to open up her presents to see what was inside.
After presents we had a little birthday cookie.
Make a wish and blow out the candles!
Karys was eager to help her big sister.
Auntie Heather and Gracie are all smile with their cookie!
Me and birthday girl.
We gave Gracie a little pot with some flower seeds, Heather and Gracie want to see if they have green thumbs, so they plant the seeds.
...add a little water
Their thumbs aren't green, but their fingers are dirty with dirt.
We then head outside to test out Gracie's new "Bucket of Bubbles"
So many bubbles...
...the girls were pretty good at blowing bubbles!
They were also good at popping the bubbles.
Karys show off her skills...
...and Gracie's tries too.
I try my hand at blowing some bubbles.
The girls did a great job of popping the bubbles.
We had a great time in Orange City. The time went fast, we headed back for Des Moines Sunday morning. It was a lot of fun to hang out, even just for a short weekend, and we managed to get some work done even with all of our playing! Here is the tree that I painted in the nursery.
Here I am with the finished product.
Heather and Nathan pose in front of the flowers
Nathan and Shay are all smiles.
Shay and Heather are having fun enjoying the great weather.
I get my picture taken with my favorite Dutch girl!
...and Nathan wanted to be in the picture too!
After the photo shoot, we went to get some food. On the way, I stopped to take a picture of these monster tulips.
No festival is complete without tractors and Nathan can always find them, even if they are not John Deere green.
We stopped and picked up Nathan's fishing pole and headed to the pond to see if there were any fish to be found.
Nathan shows off his casting skills...
Heather and Nathan walk around the pond in search of fish.
We didn't find any fish...but we found a turtle!
Of course, Nathan wanted to touch it.
I held on to him to make sure he didn't end up in the pond with the turtle.
Nathan was so excited, he couldn't get enough of the turtle.
One last picture in front of the tulips to close out our 2009 Tulip Time experience!
The most important part of Nathan's cool down...Poffertjes (Poffertjes are a traditional Dutch batter treat. Poffertjes look like tiny pancakes, but they are much sweeter. Typically, they are served with powdered sugar and butter.)
