June Road Trip

WARNING - This is a VERY long post!
After helping with our church's vacation Bible school for a week in June, we packed up and headed to Knoxville Iowa. Tyler hung out with Grandma & Grandpa Haselhuhn while Mom & Dad went to Adam's 15-year Melcher-Dallas Class Reunion. Here is Tyler enjoying the sprinkler at Grandma's house.
Tyler also went with Dad and Grandma to the Melcher-Dallas Coal Miner's Day Festival Parade and lunch...no pictures from that though, Daddy forgot the camera. But Tyler did come home with a HUGE bag of candy from the parade! On Sunday we went to the Haselhuhn Family Reunion and then headed back home for one night to repack and then left again Monday morning driving this time to Traci's home town of Clarinda, Iowa. We arrived Monday afternoon and stayed with Traci's Grandma & Grandpa Geer until Friday. Traci's Mom, Janelle and her sister, Emily also joined us for part of the week. Here are some things we did on our busy week:

Tyler liked the farm cats that let him pet them - unlike our cats at home!

Tyler's Great Grandpa Geer took him for a tractor ride....
up on the hill to see the cows.....

and even let him drive!!
Four generations of the Geer Family (Traci's mother's side) played at the farm that day, but this photo is my favorite!

The main reason we went back this week was to help dress chickens at my Aunt Martha's house - this time we had 4 generations of the Stephens Family (Traci's Dad's side) helping with this job! Traci hadn't helped dress chickens since she was in middle school, so I had a lot to re-learn. It was nice and cool - but very windy! Tyler had fun splashing in the water, playing with his 2nd cousins, and off-roading with his favorite dump truck that he can't leave home without!

Siblings: Emily, David & Traci and Cousins: Kelsey & Tyler

Tyler had a blast playing in the creek near my grandparent's house while my Mom, sister, and I picked gooseberries along the creek! Below is a photos of Tyler in a feed bunk near the creek and my sister and I leading Tyler on our hike.

While in Clarinda, we did some other fun "Clarinda" type things like visit the Library to read and play with trains, Emily and I took Tyler on a stroller ride around the boulevard Tyler got lots of quality time with Aunt Emily on this trip)......


...and we shopped at Easters and Tyler rode on the horse just like I did as a kid! Tyler also got THREE lawn mower rides from Great Grandpa Geer by sweet talking him into "un more" several times over!


My Mom, Aunt Marvis, Grandma, Sister, Tyler, and I also drove over to Viking Lake near Villisca to eat at their lakeside restaurant. We also drove through the campgrounds and reminisced about our family camping trips there. We ended the day by stopping at The Vanderholm Farm (4-H friends) and Cody was kind enough to take Tyler on a golf cart ride out to the pasture to see some very friendly cows and calves! Tyler's favorite part was playing "tag - you're it" with one of their dogs who would chase him around the farm yard!


One quick video of a new favorite past time of Tyler's - he is trying to say, "one, two, three, go!" He will do this on any racetrack (read: hallway) that he finds!


We left Clarinda on Friday and then drove back to Knoxville for 4th of July weekend with the Haselhuhns and Langebartels. Tyler had fun playing in the sprinkler with cousin Sarah...

...and playing with second cousins...

...and cuddling with Grandma Haselhuhn before the fireworks!


It was all a ton of fun! Tyler got to see 5 of his grandpas and great-grandpas in one week! But, after the 10-day road trip Tyler and Mommy were very happy to be home in our own beds once again.

June Camping Trip

We went camping at Lake Icaria in Corning, Iowa with Traci's Aunt Mary & Aunt Martha and their families June 18-20. We barely got the tent put up Friday night before it was dark and then as we unpacked we realized the extension cord for the fan had been left behind in Boone (and as muggy as it was - we NEEDED the fan), so we made a late night hour-long round trip drive to Creston for an extension cord and finally crawled into our tent around 11:00pm! The photo below is our new upgraded tent - one that we can actually stand up in and has enough room to entertain a toddler during a morning rain storm! Thankfully Adam staked it down very well because the overnight wind and rain tested his skills! Luckily Tyler slept through it all!
Here is Our multi-family meal time station and Tyler hanging out:

The highlight of our weekend was spending Saturday on the lake - pretty much all day swimming, tubing, and skiing. Tyler liked the boat and his life jacket much better this year. "Boat" and "lake" were his new favorite words! The sound and movement of the boat lulled him into a long afternoon nap followed by snacks and then a family ride on the tube!!

Train Ride

One of Tyler's favorite things to say is "choo choo," especially when we cross the train tracks here in Boone! He has also been really into Thomas the Train toys and cartoons. One of our friends from church volunteers at the Boone Scenic Valley Railroad and asked if we wanted to meet up on Saturday afternoon and go for a ride. We knew Tyler would LOVE it!














Excited by the model train in the station.














Ready to get on the train - saying "cheese."










Leaning WAY over the side of our open air car to have the best view - even the huge drop over the side of the High Bridge! Tyler was very brave and mostly wanted to stand up to ride instead of sitting. He loved it all except for the loud train whistle when the train turned around to head back and we were 1 car away from the loud train engine whistle - he jumped each time it blew.












Riding over the swollen Des Moines River



When we started the 1.5 hour trip we were at the end of the train, but half way the train stopped and the engine moved to the back of the train so we could head back the way we came - and then we were at the front of the train - with specks of coal/soot raining down on us from the train's smoke stack. By the end of the ride Tyler looked like he had been playing with the chimney sweeps from Mary Poppins!! So he got bath #2 of the day when we got home. I LOVE this picture. He was so happy....until we had to get back in the car to go home!




Haselhuhns, Halversons, and Lutzs (minus Jill and me).

Ames Aquatic Center

On Friday I decided to take Tyler to the new water park in Ames since we were in town to see my Mom already. Grandma went along to take pictures. Tyler was very excited to play in the water and a little overwhelmed at all the fun things to do! He only fussed once that he couldn't go on the big kids water slide (it helped that there were 2 slides in the wading pool for him).

Tyler Tales

Here are some things Tyler has amused us with lately:

We went to the Boone Pool for opening night last Friday and Tyler enjoyed the 2 wading pools and then pointed to the big pool and wanted to try it out...but then he saw the water slide and could not understand my reasoning that the water slide was not like the slide at the park and he was not old enough for this one...almost had to leave the pool due to the melt down that occurred.

After watching me weed the flower garden several weeks ago and helping me put some of the weeds into the wheel barrel after I pulled them up and handed them to him...yesterday Tyler took his new little plastic wheel barrel out into the yard, picked a dandelion, put it in his wheel barrel, and then pushed the wheel barrel around the house and out to dump in the stick/burn pile. Monkey see, monkey do!

We played in the garage last night because it was raining so hard outside. He was kicking his soccer ball around and it finally ended up rolling under my car and stopped in the dead center, too far to reach - without a moments pause, Tyler ran over to get his plastic dump truck, sat it down under my car and gave it a push in the direction of the ball. The truck bumped into the ball and pushed the ball out the other side! I was impressed with his young ingenuity!

Today...

Today I decided to stop putting it off and finally get to work on creating our family blog page. It has been on my "to-do" list for far too long. It is still a work in progress and I don't know what all the bells and whistles on this site will allow me to do yet, but I wanted to share with you all what I have created so far. It is my hope that this blog allows friends and family near and far to keep up with what the Haselhuhn family has been up to lately and watch as Tyler grows and changes before our eyes. It is also my plan to use things like this while Tyler is napping to keep my mind busy and try not to think about how homesick I am for camp this time of year! Enjoy!!