Back from the Desert

Wow!  What a great couple of weeks we have had.  First, I got to go to St. Louis, pick my sister and her daughter up at the airport and then we went to see the parental units.

I must interject here.  While I was at the airport an alarm went off.  I was on the phone with my friend, Marsha at the time and she was all "What the heck is that!"  I told her I needed to hang up because we were being told to evacuate the terminal.  !!!  I walked out to the sidewalk and thought, "Maybe I ought to at least cross the street so that if this place blows up I may have a chance."  Of course, I did nothing.  After several minutes of earsplitting noise and dire announcements, the commotion stopped.  I asked an official looking person what the heck that was and his reply was, "Oh, someone probably burned a bagel."   ???  Really?  You are seriously kidding me, right?  Of course, it happened again and I completely ignored it.  When we were loading the bags into the car we heard it again and I had to explain it to my sister.  Sheesh.

My sister coming into town was a surprise for my dad!  How fun.  I went into the condo while Julie and Elise hid in the car.   I then said, "Oh, I forgot.  I have to bring in your Father's Day gift."  I went out to the car, got my two sweating relatives and then, surprise!  It was great.  Dad was really surprised.  We had a great time and I got to see some old friends.  We saw my brother and his family, went out to dinner with my aunt and uncle, went to the Lantern Festival (hope that you saw those pics on the previous post!) and had breakfast with my other brother and his family.  We managed a couple of shopping trips, including one to Art Mart (heavy sigh) and REI.  Thank goodness I found my special Canyon hat there!  I was glad I had it on our hike!  (That hat will make an appearance in some photos and there had better be no laughing!  I mean it!)

College friends:  Marsha and Michele.  Miss you guys.

Amy, Julie, Elise, Sandy and oh yeah, in the back, Ed.

My sister left STL on that Saturday and I drove back to Davenport with my two nieces in tow.  We ran through Hannibal to drop off a few things at Aunt Gracie's.  She gave us some absolutely fab homemade English Muffins.  Yum.  We made good use of those at the house.  Then we met some more family at the Mark Twain Dinette for lunch.  A quick trip to the Mark Twain Cave and then it was time to go home.  Whew.  I think the girls were just glad to relax for a while.  Of course, we had to watch a Twilight movie every night.  That was a given.  The rest of the time we did some sightseeing, cleaned house, cooked, went to see the Fireworks and the 4th of July Parade and just had some major fun.  Then on the 5th it was all aboard to fly on to Phoenix and the Grand Canyon.

In the Cave.

Out of the Cave.

Our great neighbors, Diann and Hannah with the girls.

I had a blast trying to take photos of the fireworks.  This was one of the better ones.

At the Bettendorf 4th of July Parade!

Everyone should visit the John Deere Pavilion and pretend to drive a combine!

Well, this post is really long so I will post more another time.  I will say that Elise did very well after we banned her from talking about Twilight for an entire evening.  I'll be back.