Hi there, friends! I am sharing details from our trip back home last week. We had two weddings in Iowa, two weekends in a row which prompted our trip. Our first Friday night we were able to stay with our amazing friends, Patrick and Angela. They are seriously the sweetest! They even made us yummy breakfast pizza. Then we headed to the land of Iowa for our first wedding, Matt's college roommate. As you probably know, we have a US map in our house and put a picture of us on the states we have visited. Somehow we didn't have a picture for Iowa so we got a couple chances on this trip.
Between the ceremony and reception, the wedding party went to a park to take pictures and play yard games. They invited everyone to come, and we had a great time! I thought it was such a fun idea! I headed back to the hotel room early, and Matt got to hang out with his friends.
Sunday we drove back to see my family, with a quick stop in Omaha to see some more friends, Andy and Rebecca. They are also expecting a baby so we had lunch and swapped gifts. The sales lady offered to put a bow on our present, and I was super impressed!
It was so good to see them, and we can't wait to meet their precious little girl!
Sunday night we headed to the lake and went for a nice, long family boat ride!
Atlee came back from an awesome trip to New Zealand, Australia, and Hawaii on Tuesday. My mom went to pick her up from the airport, and I stayed home to help get the "Atlee celebration" ready. We had some souvenirs for her from our Europe trip, and my mom got her favorite snack.
I also made her a sign and cooked dinner. We had such a great time looking through her pictures. She was so tired she was almost delirious and could hardly remember anything that happened on her trip!
Wednesday night we had a blast taking maternity photos at the lake! Here are some of my favorites!
I was really having a hard time deciding if we should do any or not, but I'm so glad we did!
And our photographer was amazing!!
Thursday we set out on a shopping trip. We started at an adorable baby store, and I found these. They are adorable and match our nursery perfectly!! (Don't worry, I'll share pictures when it's done!) We found some more cute things for the nursery at Hobby Lobby, too!
Friday morning I made a quick run with my financial planner turned trucker husband! It was a VERY bumpy ride!!
My aunt, sisters, and cousins threw me a baby shower that evening at the lake.
I found this cute little template and gave these to them as hostess gifts. They seriously did an AMAZING job!!
We are decorating our nursery in a safari theme so the shower was all safari themed as well.
The food was my favorite part! Seriously, how cute are these!?! Alligator dip, alligator guacamole, lion vegetable tray,
elephant fruit,
and cupcake giraffe!
They also had a lot of pink or blue themed things since we don't know the gender of Baby B!
All of the decorations were so cute!
I had so much fun! The girls went to a ton of work, and it was awesome. We played The Price is Right to try and guess the price of all the baby items on the table.
I got the cost of the diapers right on the money!! If only we could play this game at the store and take home things for free if we guessed the price correctly! ;)
They also had everyone fill out forms to guess things about the baby such as birth date, weight, hair color, traits he or she would get from mom and dad, etc. It's been so fun going through and seeing everyone's answers! I can't wait to see who is closest!
I requested everyone bring their favorite baby book in place of a card to help build our library. I'm so excited to read all these books to our little one. There were lots of farm books!!
The girls also had an active game planned which ended up being the "after hours game" for the ladies that stuck around. I don't remember what it was called, but the premise included walking with a ping pong ball between your knees and dropping it into the mason jar without using your hands. I did not play, but I took lots of fun pictures instead!
They played old ladies vs. young ladies, and had to play several rounds until the older ladies won!
Since I passed on the game, I got to enjoy some one on one time with baby Clay!
Saturday we were back to Iowa for wedding #2 for some friends who sold books with us. I thought the bubbles were so pretty floating above the church when the bride and groom walked out!
We had such a great time catching up with all our many friends that were at the wedding! We left around 9:30, and I felt like we were the first to leave. It was a rockin' party!
Saturday night we got to hang out with Patrick and Angela again! Sunday morning they took us to the Farmers' Market. I just love spending time with them!!
They also took us to the Bob Kerrey bridge which spans across Nebraska and Iowa. We took this opportunity for option #2 for our Iowa picture because the best thing about Iowa....you can see Omaha while standing there!
We surprised my dad with tickets to the College World Series for Father's Day. I think he was really excited!! My grandpa also came along for the fun.
It was a hot one, but we all had a great time!
We tried to see as many people as we could, but we always seem to run out of time. We came home to LOTS of presents! Our lovely neighbors brought gifts into our house all week; they are just the sweetest!
It's been fun opening all of the shower gifts. I will be sad when gifts stop arriving every day!
Our crib also arrived while we were gone!
It's been very hot since we got back. I caught this temperature in my car. I'm sure it was a little off, but still that's totally crazy!!! 127!
Hope you all stay cool!
