The Hoekman family vacation was in Iowa this year! The kids and I drove separately from Dan since we were planning to have another adventure + stay in South Dakota for a while afterwards. Lucy was in the navigator seat; my phone had lots of selfies like this one by the time we arrived at our destination. ;) As a side note, Lucy made that tie dye hooded sweatshirt at camp and she adores it! She is becoming quite the tie dye queen.
We stopped at a rest area and laughed at the most boring historical marker of all time - the Minnesota-Iowa Boundary ... Hah! It just so happened that we were visiting this spot on the anniversary of when Iowa became a state, August 4th. Happy Birthday, Iowa!
We made it! As always, everyone was eager to see the cousins.
We started playing right away.
The weather for the weekend was looking less than ideal so we opted to have family pictures right away, basically as soon as Dan pulled in the driveway. We stayed on a nice rural property so it was a great spot for photos.
Here are the pictures of the Storm kids this year - my beautiful girl...
And my handsome boys!
Love these kiddos of mine.
I literally can not remember the last time that we had a picture of just our parents and the Hoekman kids!
After pictures we celebrated the August birthdays!
My August birthday boy was sure excited to get some baseball cards as a gift!
Roman popped on the front porch and found a huge toad!
On Saturday morning we visited the Sioux City Railroad museum.
Get ready for lots of train content ...
It was actually a pretty cool place!
We toured all kinds of train cars; they also had a good exhibit on the Holocaust and the trains that took people to concentration camps.
The crew was excited to cruise around the museum campus on a little train.
All aboard!
Love riding with my little buddy.
They had a very elaborate model train set up for visitors to view.
They did have some bizzare scenes like this random herd of elephants crossing the railroad tracks.
Having all of our kids in this building brought the median age of the model train enthusiasts down by a lot! Haha! Seriously, what is the model train industry going to do in a decade when most of these old guys are gone?
Leo's favorite display was this working Carnival.
His Dad got an arm workout holding him up to see everything.
As we were leaving the manager of the Museum complex gave mom a commemorative railroad spike for bringing her entire family. What an honor! ;)
Our next adventure was hitting the local pool after lunch.
We arrived right at mandatory break time so it was good timing.
It was a very nice pool for such a tiny Iowa town!
Everyone had a great time cooling off.
Can you see all of those ominous clouds behind us? We were at the pool until we were kicked out due to lightening and weather alerts. On our way to the cars the heavens opened up and we were drenched!
After we got cleaned up, we zipped over to LeMars - the 'Ice Cream Capital of the World'. More ice cream is produced here by a single company than in any other city in the world.
We entered the theater for a video about the factory/ice cream production process.
I thought that the lighting in the space was pretty cool!
They had a few interactive exhibits.
And lots of chances for photo shoots.
We could not leave without some treats!
Yum - everyone was eager to try some samples of the product.
These little boys were a mess by the end!
We ended up with a very quick departure right as tornado sirens were going off. Oof - August storms in Iowa are no joke.
I don't have any pictures of our Saturday night/Sunday morning except for this montage which really captures the essence of our Air BnB. Menards coffee cups, Menards Koozies, and a 'Shootin Deers & Drinkin Beers - That's How I Roll' thermometer. Ai yi yi.
What a FUN weekend - always great to get together with family!
