Mississippi Palisades

We have been taking full advantage of the summer.  I am trying to fit as much as I can into everyday of the summer. 

 Most days include some bare-footing fun.  Lil Miss loves to be bare foot.  I find her shoes like this regularly.  I guess she follows after her mommy. 

We have made a few impromptu drives to find ice cold treats this summer.  Usually we try to include Daddy along on these trips becuase ice cream seems to be his favorite food, but occasionally we sneak in a ice cream stop without him.  Lil Miss is getting just big enough to see ALL the wonderful flavors.  Somehow she is not content with eating out of Mommy's bowl anymore.  She wants her own cup. 

{yum yum}

Do you like her new short haircut?  I did it, I had them do more than just a trim.  Her hair grows so fast though so it will be long in no time.

 In addition to the ice cream, we have been trying to keep cool.  That means sometimes we end the day with a dip in the pool.  Okay we can't really say dip because the "pool" only allows 6" of water in the pool, but we get our feet wet. 

{I love how the little girls love to play together}

 And when we aren't eating ice cream or getting our feet wet, we are trying to get our moneys worth out of the camper.  This weekend we made a trip to Illinois to the Mississippi Palisades Campground.  We camped with a few co workers from Nate's work.  The kids were in heaven to have more kids to play with.  Nate is getting much better at backing up and parking the camper.  We occasionally mess up, like parking the camper to close to the electrical box that we can't push out the bump outs so we have to do it all over again.  Bummer!  :-(  But everytime we camp now we are getting better. 

 The kids are either getting used to the camping or had more to keep them entertained with the new friends that not once did i hear "I'm bored!"  I did hear "Get these bugs away from me!" and "Mom, can you spray bug spray on me again?"  many many times.  The mosquitos were horrible. We've been pretty lucky up until now that we hadn't had to even use the bug spray..... until this weekend.  We went through a whole bottle of bug spray and a whole bottle of fogger. 

 We did some hiking.  Lil Miss sure loves her spot in the backpack.  She even fell asleep on the morning hike. 

 There were lots of hiking trails but we only got two short hikes in.  We stretched the kids pretty far.  The first hike was over 3 miles and we almost lost Bubba to the bugs.  He was not pleased with bugs buzzing in his ears. 

The best part was when we found a hanging vine right on the edge of the trail.  The kids all had to take a swing like little Tarzans.  Bubba even put in the Tarzan scream.  

 The farthest point on the hike was a shelter where we had a mid morning snack and put our feet up for a few minutes.  The view was lacking.  I was anticipating being able to see the Mississippi from this lookout but unfortuantely there was too much foliage in the way.   We instead found treasure!  The kids helped find a geocache up in the hills.  This is maybe where we got the poison ivy?  Who knows.  I tried to keep the kids and Mommy and Daddy out of the green itchy stuff but apparently we got into it somewhere.

 {Look at those hikers!}

{Rosie found the geocache!}

This BIG guy was trying to catch a ride back to Iowa.  He was on my seat satruday morning.  Ewwww.  I am glad I caught it and didn't sit down. 
The last couple days have been putting things away and doing the laundry.  (De javu')  I only get everything washed to pack it up again to travel to Tennessee for the Fourth of July.  We are taking advantage of the summer.  More Fun to Come!!