Back from Iowa

We're baaaaaack!!! After 5 days and 1400 miles, we are back from our whirlwind trip to eastern Iowa to visit Greg's relatives. Greg and I left Heber Springs with his mother, Elaine, on Tuesday, July 3 and drove to St. Louis, where we saw Greg's nephew, John, and his wife, Leslie, and their cat JJ... and we had lunch with them after touring their condo. Traffic wasn't bad, so we headed on for Burlington, Iowa, arriving about 7:30 p.m. We were tired, but glad to have all the drive behind us for a day or so. We listened to a wonderful book on CD... A Good Dog... about a border collie named Orson. It was funny and sad and altogether entertaining.



Wednesday, July 4, was my 50th birthday! We took a short spin around Burlington before heading to visit Greg's great-aunt Vivian. She took us on a tour of Burlington, and we had lunch at a restaurant on the Mississippi River ... Big Muddy. It was an old restored warehouse of some sort. We spent the rest of the day visiting with Aunt Vivian at her house. After a carry-in supper of KFC, Greg and I went to see Evan Almighty. It was funny, and we enjoyed it. I'm not sure it's as good as Bruce Almighty, but it was good, just the same.


Thursday was Aunt Vivian's 98th birthday, and her nieces/nephews threw her a potluck lunch party (the main purpose of our trip to Iowa). There were 23 people crammed into her little 1950's house for this lunch, and everyone seemed to have a good time. Aunt Vivian has lived in this same house since 1966! We probably came the farthest for the party, except for a great-nephew who had come from Las Vegas! There were relatives there from as far away as Illinois and Minnesota, and as near as a few blocks over in Burlington! Aunt Vivian had a wonderful time. She was given a "memory box" -- a wooden box that contained memories all of her family and friends had written down for her and secretly mailed to the cousin who compiled them in the box. She LOVED her box of memories!


Friday, we took Greg's mother and his Aunt Lova to Cedar Rapids to see another sister, Erma. She is in a nursing home, but her children brought her home for the day to her old home place, and we visited them there. Two of Erma's children, Randy and Janet were there, along with Janet's children Annette, Scott, and Tab, and Tab's wife and children. We visited several hours with all of these cousins and Aunt Erma, then we drove to Aunt Lova's house in Galesburg, Illinois. We were all so tired, and it didn't take us long to get into bed!

Saturday morning, we hit the road at 6:50, and we arrived back in Heber Springs around 4:30 p.m. It was a long day of driving, but the weather was good... we never drove through any rain the whole trip... and we were all glad to be home!