Iowa Family Time

As we drove away from the hotel...I felt I was in fact leaving family behind. I have always had this wierd attachment to my Atcheson side. Maybe it's because I was meant to live on a farm and my two favorite 2nd cousins do just that.
It was hard for me not seeing my great uncle Ed this time. However, I felt he was always around the corner joking with someone just like old times. I can still hear and see his ornery smirk. He was my moms favorite uncle and by far my favorite great uncle. I just am certain he and my grandpa Atcheson were up in heaven being incredibly rotten. I told my husband I wished he could have met them both. He definitely missed out :)
So the drive to Des Moines wasn't too bad. Dalton has to pee every mile so we made like 3 stops on the way there however, on the way back Russ taught him to pee on his truck tire on the side of the road. Yay for boys right?
So (stay on track Tracy, geeeezzz) we arrive at my Great Aunt Donna and Great Uncle Ricks house. Standing in the driveway was a man in a purple shirt. I knew I had met him but neither of us knew each others name. :) He says "you have to tell me who you belong too." I said " I am Debbie and Steve's daughter" it was my great uncle Kenny, ONE of my grandpas brothers. I knew many faces but some were totally "who are you and who do you belong too?" LOL
One of my second cousins hadn't been around the family since 1974 and we all knew I wasn't even part of life's plan yet. :) His name is Kenny Bill....purple shirt in the driveway's son, follow?. He ended up being the talk of the reunion breakfast the next day. He lives in Maine and let's just say he may have went home a little damaged. We believe he was pretty sheltered prior to this reunion. LOL! Poor fella. However I believe he is also counting down until the next one. I know we all kind of are.
Dalton biked and ran his little legs off at the BBQ. We ate, drank (I drank soda) and laughed! It was muggy but the sun was not scorching us by any means. The lawn chairs eventually segregated into two circles of ONLY women and ONLY men...except for my father who sat with the women, go figure right?! :)
Russ and I headed to Target for a swimsuit....I got a swimming suit ...but bottom line I was looking for a Starbucks. :) Thank goodness they had one and I totally got one. While at Target Dalton's leg aches were setting in and we knew that the sanity level for Russ and I was running low. We headed back to Rick and Donna's for a bit. We saw that everyone was winding down and were gonna head to the hotel for some pool time. Bubba was so excited...which made me so happy. If you recall last summer the kid despised the water. He still doesn't care for splashing, but he was jumping off the side into Russ's arms and even told Russ to let him go....he of course went under water but came up smiling. Yay!
We all dried off and headed up to our rooms. Only to meet up at the hotel bar in a bit. I got Bubba all snuggled in his jammies and he jumped into his bed. The beds were AWESOME. We turned on Disney TV and within minutes Dalton was out. Luckily they booked our room literally right around the corner from the bar. So Russ and I were able to join the family, even though the bed was real tempting. I knew our time together was limited, so we made the best of every minute. Our family packed every seat in the bar, they of course were closed because it's 10:30pm now so without second though our family brought in beer and crown and even ordered pizza. YUM! There was laughter until 1am. Not for us though Russ and I hit the hay about midnight.
We woke about 730 Sunday morning and joined the hotel crew(family that stayed there) in the kitchen area for a fabulous continental. It was no Holiday Inn people. This hotel was so cool. :) Made for a great vacay! We had many more laughs at breakfast as well. It really is a very unique bunch of people. I love them all.
On another great note I learned this weekend that I have many new vacation spots. I have family in Maine(Russ and I's dream place) , Iowa (all over, farms and non-farms), and Huntington Beach, CA. (Mark and Brad please book us a weekend or hell how about a week stay) :)
I am sure I have forgot something regarding this trip and please be patient there will be pictures soon. I think I took 50.
Good times for sure! Until next trip. MUAH!