...and we are back!

Well, we have been back for a few days now, but we have been getting settled and ran into some fridge problems...yes, when we got home our kitchen smelled like EWW! Our fridge broke when we were gone for a week and all our food was rotten when we got home!! EWW! So unfortunately we had to throw all our food away and thanks to our landlord we got a new one! It looks pretty much the same as the old one, but its always fun to get a new appliance, and then I got to organize all our new food in our new fridge! yay! yes... I am kind of a dork, but I love doing stuff like that. :)...anyways, besides our fridge troubles we had a wonderful vacation!

We started our trip in Des Moines spending some time with each family. We got to see some old friends, and I also had a booth at the art market downtown. There was so much going on downtown that weekend, so we thought that could be either be good or bad for the art market and unfortunately it was not very busy. In fact there were times when no one was there at all! But the good thing was that the people that came were buying stuff, so I was able to make a little money, but not as much if it were busy. I met lots of local artist and exchanged cards with them. My mom came out and helped and it was a good time. Here is a picture of what my booth looked like...I might be doing the art market again in august and september so stay posted for info on that in the next couple of months.

After spending 6 wonderful days in Des Moines we headed down to Kansas City to visit my grandparents who have been looking forward to seeing us ever since we said we were coming; planning our meals (that's what italians do best.) My sister and her husband Josh met us down there, so it was so nice to see them as well. She has the cutest little pregnant belly! I miss you sis! We ate lots of good food and had good conversation...and Will actually started eating whole cheerios! The first time he got excited to eat any sort of food!...one after another he kept wanting more. It was so cute to watch. :)...but he wants nothing to do with any other foods. We are just taking it slow.

For the 3rd and 4th of July Thad, Will, and I headed over to St. Louis on our way home back up the river. They are hosting the All-Star baseball game next weekend so there was so much going on downtown St. Louis. We had a blast walking around and just watching all the people. We went to a free Counting Crows concert under the Gateway Arch, shopped at "the loop" and had fresh root beer at Fitz's on the 3rd. The next morning (4th) we took Will swimming for the first time in our hotel pool. It was freezing!!!...so I don't think he really liked it very much. We will take him sometime this next week again. Then we visited the St. Louis Zoo and toured the Anheuser-Busch Brewery. We had lots of fun but we were super tired on the way home that night. We missed the fireworks, but we saw lots of small town fireworks on our drive back to the Quad Cities. So all in all we had a great trip!...but it is always nice to get home. Click here to see our pictures from St. Louis...and yes I got excited with almost all the animals we saw at the zoo and took too many pictures so i only included a few. They do not look as neat in the pictures. Hope you all had a wonderful forth of July as well. :)