Safari Heartland!

My parents have kindly been helping us prepare for East Africa by taking us to Safari mini-golf and the Omaha zoo. It's so realistic, we feel like we've already been to Tanzania and back! Ryan is looking forward to the go-carts, which apparently inhabit the bush; and we've learned that the scariest of all wild animals is the cranky toddler.
-Betsy

Vino Amore!

We started the week at the Danforth's right by having the LARGEST and most colorful salad Betsy and I have seen. Sorry, Joel, we're sort of cop-ing your style here, not trying to impinge on your culinary blog. (for great cooking tips and blog hints visit: write.click.cook.listen) The salad was wonderful, thank you Laura for starting up a fibrous movement for all of us, we appreciate it. We also helped Bill "rack" the wine, looks like he may be giving me a wine enema... Frank, our wonderful super-dog, will be staying in Shenandoah with Bill and Laura while we globe-trot. So far, there has been only one major battle between their cat and our dog, Cat 1 vs. Dog 0. We recently returned from a nice game of frisbee golf, in the rain. Action shot - BETSY GOES THE DISTANCE!

-Ryan

Bakin' Chickin'

Headed to Dubuque for a bit of golf, kids and the dog being completely run out of energy. My nephews are great, Wyatt obviously loves dogs and Alex has a great golf swing. I love to make crazy faces in pictures, you can see where I get this from...

-Ryan

Home, sweet, home!

Land of tall corn, small towns and the ever present smell of Pu, IOWA! Well, we crossed the Iowa, Missouri border about a week ago, sorry for no updates, and we found a stark contrast. Decent roadways vs. Missouri pot-holes, thank god we didn't have far to go. Well, we're back in Iowa and everything is great so far. Go Iowa for wind-power, infact, they're all over the place, gotta love them! Maybe in a few years Iowa will be off the grid, aside from JD equipment, of course. The weather is beautiful and the corn is sweet, hopefully your week has gone as well as ours.

-Ryan

Our next stop was Michelle and Tom's in St. Louis. We got a great tour of the city, and fell in love with their house. Unfortunately, our plan of moving into their spare bedroom was thwarted, as our pets don't seem to be huge fans of each other. Tom got the brunt of a cascade of events where Frank the dog freaked out Nixon the cat, who in turn attacked Beefer the cat, who got scared a Pu-ed on Tom's arm. According to Pu-ology and Michelle, it was a #3. Anyway, besides some psychological scarring of the cats, we had a great visit!
-Betsy

Floating like a log down the river

Went to Augusta on our trip home to visit with my sister and brother-in-law. Betsy had not met Sophie, their new daughter, so we spent some time trying to decide who she looked like... For those of you who know my Sarah and Justin, decide for yourself. It was a nice relaxing weekend, good to see both of them. We also met up with a few USF friends, Ryan and Tamara, who were our tour guides around the river walk. After that we ate the LARGEST pieces of cake known to man, which definitely tested our Pu-bilities. On to St. Louis Monday morning, it was sad to leave the Sinnings, hopefully we'll see them as soon as we return, I'm sure Sophie is going to be HUGE by then.
-Ryan

Goodbye Florida!

After a week of mad packing and purging our apartment of the majority of our worldly possessions and four years of planning, we finally left the Sunshine State. Goodbye swealtering heat, hour-long commutes to go 15 miles and mosquitoes who can skeletonize a goat, and hello, um, swealtering heat, hour-long trips to go 15 km and yeah, you get the picture.....(to be continued).
-Betsy