Meandering Moons

Family Trip (part 2)

 We visited the Mississippi River Museum while in Dubuque, IA where Noah came face to face with the biggest catfish I've ever seen!  I think Noah was dreaming about catching a biggin' like this some day.

Got one!!!... or maybe it's the other way around :)

He also got to feel what it was like to man the helm of a paddle wheeler.  If it has a steering wheel or handle bars, it is guaranteed that Noah is going to love it.

 Then it was on to Madison, WI where I attended a two day course at the University of WI.  We were treated to this beautiful sunset before watching a fourth of July fireworks show over the lake... 

Next stop was a surprise for Noah... Moline, IA, the official home of John Deere.

Well he certainly enjoyed his surprise!

They have an awesome John Deere museum in Moline, with several antique tractors and a variety of new JD's you can climb up into.

He had the time of his life going from tractor to tractor to tractor to tractor to..... you get the idea. 

 I had a blast getting so many smiley photo ops :)

I think that it was a testament to how wonderful the museum was that it took Noah three hours of being there before he asked if they had a gift shop!

He was thrilled to get a "waterloo boy" of his very own.  He fancies himself an antique tractor model collector now.  

The last night of our trip was actually on the fourth, to celebrate we had our own sparkler show in the parking lot of the super eight we were staying at in Lamoni, IA.  

The great thing about traveling with kids is that everything is new and exciting, seeing things through their eyes makes you see  the ordinary as extraordinary... it's wonderful, as was our trip.

A good evening fishing trip

The male Moon genes have definitely been coming out in Noah lately... he has become quite the fisherman this summer.  He and Phillip have done a lot of it lately and this evening Noah was excited to bring Momma along to show off his skills.  It was a beautiful evening the temperature dropping down to the nineties  and a full moon set to rise.  So we headed out to the local lake...

 Where within about two minutes Noah caught the first fish.  

 Followed soon after by another...

and another.  All in all he caught nine fish and one turtle!  He was so estatic.  I loved seeing him so excited  :)  

Phillip only caught three which is probably a good thing since he stayed busy helping Noah get his fish off the hook.  One of the fish that Phillip caught was just a little thing.  Noah told him in a reassuring voice that it was ok because it sure was a pretty fish :)

Road Trip (part 1)

 Oh, no... you can probably tell by the title that there are lots of pics from our recent road trip.  I am a bit tired tonight, so I will have to split them up.  

I had a conference to go to in Madison, Wiss. over fourth of July weekend and was able to take some extra days off so we could do some vacationing along the way.

Our first stop was in Omaha where we visited the wonderful zoo they have there.  

They have great interactive exhibits, including this sneaky little goat in the petting zoo.

The habitats were very natural and the animals active and more than happy to have their pictures taken.

They had a desert dome with a cool underground swamp exhibit, felt just like you were in the bayou... which my swamp people loving son thought was so cool!  Seriously great zoo, the best I've been to in a long time.

Our next stop was in Dubuque, IA mainly because it was on the way, but also because I found a hotel with great rates that had an indoor waterpark.  Apparently the indoor water park is a midwest phenom... we saw quite a few of them along the way!  

This was the view from our room... not bad, I thought!  We actually saw quite a bit of the Mississippi River on our trip.

I apologize for the quality of the pictures, but one thing I discovered about indoor water parks is that they are quite steamy.  I had a hard time keeping my lens from fogging up.

The best thing about the whole water park experience were all the smiles from a certain little boy (and a few from a certain big boy, as well).