Big Bull, Butter, and Babies

So Joel and I went with a few friends from church to the Iowa State Fair this past weekend. Here is a photo tour of what we did at the fair. First up was going to see Freight Train, the Fair's largest boar.

On our way to the next stop, we saw fainting goats. Unfortunately for us they did not faint. However, Joel has looked up some Youtube videos on these and it is very funny!
We then proceeded to go and see the Fair's largest bull.
Look at the size of its head compared to the girl in the picture.

We saw this and decided to have Joel pose.
Then they made me pose by a very large statue of corn. We went around this circle and tried free food. So, here is Roger with an egg on a stick.
Here is the butter Shawn Johnson and the butter cow. Yes, both of these are completely sculpted out of butter. They always have a cow. Shawn Johnson is sculpted, because she is from West Des Moines and for any of you in the dark she is also now a gold medal winner at the Olympics on the balance beam. (Last year, they had a butter Harry Potter.)
Then it was on to the baby animals. Look at the cute goats!

Ohh...baby pigs are so cute.
Here is Mongo, he was born at the fair. He was so cute as well.
Joel and me welcoming everyone to the fair.
Joel and AM took the sky glider. Joel caught me in the middle of a pose. I didn't know when he was taking the actual picture. Yes, I am the one with my arms up.
We determined that these things aren't made for tall people, but we still had fun!

Did you know that going to the Iowa State Fair is in a book called A Thousand Things to do Before you Die? I guess Joel and I can cross that one off.

On another note, Hat Trick, our fish, is on a diet. He is really fat. Haha. I guess we got overzealous with his feeding. Mean, what can we say, he is the fish that lived.

The Girls' Weekend!

I know i am updating a lot lately, but I have a lot to catch up on for this summer. The weekend of July 25th I went to Chicago for a Girls' Weekend. It was so fun and so needed. I took the Amtrak there and back, which was an experience in and of itself. I met some really interesting people on the train, so that was a good thing. However, on Friday the train was four hours late to the station and on Sunday due to storms there was a coal train derailed. Fortunately, we were only an hour and half drive from Des Moines, so Joel picked me up and then we drove 40 minutes to pick my car and 40 minutes home (we drove in awful storms!!). Now that I recapped my traveling experiences let me highlight some of the things we did in Chicago. 6 out of the 7 of us could come, so it was a ton of fun seeing the majority of my mellons (I will explain this word in another post). We really didn't do anyting too exciting. We did some shopping, walked around Millenium Park, helped Melanie move into her apartment, threw Erin a baby shower, and got all dressed up for a fun dinner.

Here are some pictures:

Osceola, IA--the train station where I spent four hours on Friday morning.

Beth and I waiting in Mel's lobby.

Steph and her new hat!

Erin was tired from all the walking.

Bethany in Melanie's living/dining/bedroom.

Rebecca, Erin (and baby girl!) Stephanie and Bethany by the river.

Us at the Bean--Rebecca, Beth, Erin, Steph, Me and Mel

By the face fountain--Mel, Steph and Beth

Erin at her baby shower--we got her a video moniter set.

Waiting for Erin and Steph's train on Sunday morning.

Sorry, I don't have any pictures of us all dressed up, but we all looked great! I love these girls! We missed Rebecca dearly, but God knew she was needed somewhere else that weekend. :)

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad!

I just wanted to say Happy Anniversary to my mom and dad today! Hope you have fun celebrating 36 years together! God has truly blessed me with you as parents! I love you both.

Congrats Aren and Leah!

This post has a ton of pictures documenting the fun activities we got to participate in while we were home in MI this past weekend. We are so happy for Aren and Leah!

The Rehearsal Dinner--lawn games
The Bike and Bar-the groom, the bride and the bride's brother.
Me leaning off the back of the Bike and Bar
JP trying to catch up with us (acutally I think we were going uphill and made him get off to lose some weight. haha)
Aren and Leah had to answer questions about each other. If they go it wrong they had to do funny things--such as Dutch Dance.
This my friends is what is called a Bike and Bar--there are stools on eachside that are connected to peddles. Elizabeth is in the middle steering and braking for us. This is us peddling our way downtown Holland.
The group!
Going downtown Holland.
We had a shower for Leah the day before the wedding.
The boys got to go sailing the day before the wedding.

Me and Joel
The maid of honor and best man with the bride and groom
Me and Katie. (The other Phillips women)
The Phillips Boys showing off their rings. Mom and Dad have them all married off now!

The getaway car.
Their ring bearer. He was showing Joel how fast he could run. Aren and Leah. Beautiful.
Walking to the nature center.

Bubbles!

Aren and Leah driving off to their honeymoon!

Brian playing the Mario theme after the wedding.

We followed the wedding with a campfire at the Phillips' home. It was fun to talk to some good friends around a campfire. Perfect weather the entire weekend!

Again, congratulations and God Bless to Aren and Leah! Hope you are enjoying your honeymoon. We will miss you when you are in Honduras for the next year!

Summer of Weddings

Wow, so it has been a little while since I updated. I just wanted to post a few pictures from a couple weddings we attended this summer. First, we had the priviledge of going to my cousin Kara and Nate's wedding on June 13. A high light here was instead of a guest book they had a photo booth--my family had a lot of fun in that! Sorry, no pictures for that one. Unfortunately, we were not able to go to Clint and Brandie's wedding on June 21 because we were in Michigan and not Iowa, so no pictures from that either. On June 28, we went to Rebecca (a really good friend from high school) and John's wedding. A high light here was seeing all my cool friends! Here are pictures from that one: (Sorry about the size, I haven't figured out how to make them bigger with Picasa...anyone know?)
The next wedding was Chris and Jen's (friend's from Crossroad's--our church in IA). The high light at this one was probably the dance--we entertianed the DJ to say the least. Here are some pictures from that one:
We had a lot of fun at all the weddings we attended. Congrats to Kara and Nate, Clint and Brandie, Rebecca and John, and Chris and Jen!

Those were all from June 13 to July 5. We had a little break from weddings for about a month, but then we went home again this past weekend to celebrate with Joel's younger brother, Aren! He and Leah were married this past Saturday. It was good to go home and party with them. We love them both dearly. Since, this was a brother's wedding I will do a separate post to detail all the events of the past weekend. Something to look forward to is learning about the Bike and Bar...so fun and funny!