Iowa City in the Fall

We marked off October 10th on our calendar - no one was scheduled to work, so we made this a family "get-away" day. We were hopeful for good weather. We woke up to dreary clouds and a possibility of rain. Looking at the forecast, we decided to give Iowa City a try. We knew that there were things to do if it rained (we love to hit Goodwill stores). We were still hopeful that the rain would be minimal, if at all. 

We arrived in Iowa City and stopped at one of the Goodwill stores - just as the skies opened up! After hitting a few more Goodwill stores, we decided to find lunch. We Googled different pizza shops in town (finding some that were closed and others that were carry out only), we opted to head to North Liberty to eat at Falbo Bros Pizza. The pizza was decent and the worker (only one working at the time) did a phenomenal job of taking care of us!

We left North Liberty and headed north towards Lake MacBride. We didn't have an agenda but we knew that the area around the lake was beautiful, especially with the fall colors. 

We drove down many side roads - ones we'd never been on. We stopped and took pictures of nature, hiked a bit and enjoyed the beauty around us. 

While driving on one of the park roads, Maddie spotted this deer. 

Another deer - spotted by Maddie again!

The highlight of our day was when we turned onto Anglers Point Road. At the end of this road, we stopped at Angler's Point. Even though the day was overcast, it wasn't raining anymore and we enjoyed our time at this stop. 

The girls enjoyed the swing while Will & Matt looked for rocks to skip. 

We drove around the Lake MacBride area for a few hours in total. We drove by the spillway and debated on walking out to see it, but we knew we had to eat dinner still and had an hour drive home. With the kids having school & us working the next day, we decided to walk to the spillway on our next visit.

We ended our day at Cheddars - a tradition whenever we are in Iowa City. We share chicken tenders and fries and finish our meal with a Cookie Monster! YUMMM!!

We had a bit of a wait before we could be seated. 

Shortly after, we were seated and placed our order. 

Sadly, our night didn't end up as we hoped. Our waiter brought out our desserts - we were excited, until we saw that they weren't cookie monsters! It was some kind of cake with ice cream. The waiter took them back to the kitchen and told us that he would get the cookies in the oven right away. 10 minutes later, he came out and apologized again...the cookies were baked but they had run out of ice cream. Yep - the ice cream that they used with the cake desserts was the last of their ice cream. We asked about that ice cream and he told us that they gave those desserts away when we refused them! Ugh!!

We left Cheddars and decided to try Culvers to see about getting some ice cream there. Luckily they were open AND had ice cream!

It was a beautiful day - a lazy day - with no real plans once we got to Iowa City. We really enjoyed our time together - shopping, eating & taking in God's beautiful creation! 

Homecoming Weekend

Homecoming weekend was a bit late in the "homecoming" season this year. The weekend began on a cruddy note as we watched the homecoming parade in the rain. It cleared to a slight drizzle by the end of the parade, but by then everyone was a wet mess! It was wonderful to have my sister Teri home for the weekend - she tagged along to a lot of these activities throughout the weekend. 

Maddie rode with the volleyball team.

That evening was much nicer - no more rain and pleasant temps for a football game! It ended up being a fun evening with lots of family & friends. Of course, I didn't get any pictures of us in the stands that night but I found this selfie we snapped at an earlier game.

Saturday saw us dividing and conquering activities! Maddie & I headed to Eldridge for a volleyball tournament for the day. We were joined by my parents and my sister. The team ended up taking 2nd place - a great day of games! 

While we were at the volleyball games, Matt was home with the other 3 kids and snapped pictures of Alex & Andre before the homecoming dance. They didn't plan on attending the dance but wanted to dress up and take pictures with friends. They headed out for dinner afterwards. 

While Matt was taking pictures with Alex & Andre, Will was picked up by his date's parents and they (Will & Mei) headed to dinner. Maddie and I arrived home during all of this craziness and waited for Will to text that they were done eating (we were their ride to go down to the river to snap some pictures and then drop off at the dance). Everything ended up just as planned - everyone was where they were supposed to be and no hiccups along the way! A good night was had by all.