and this is all just taking way to long! so i am off! and the next set of pictures, hopefully, will be chicago! yay! but its soo sad, because i took like 240 pictures or something, but it takes to long to load... oh well. but on the bright side, i fixed my earlier mistake!
dang nab it, okay so the pic w/my shoes at the drive in isn't working... will try again later
these are my shoes.... actually, just one is mine, the other's is jolenes... at the drive-in! drive-ins are the best things in the world!!! soo much fun! we went with maryann, jolene, and em, and a few of their cousins from the other side of there family and played ultimate frisbee, and painted toenails, and those younger than twelve rode this little train that goes in a circle around the lot. and we took lots of pictures! and then it was a double feature! so we saw over the hedge first, and i really enjoyed it, though if had been a bit less environmentalisty, i might have enjoyed it more. but the "rosebud" thing!! hahaha! and i could definitely relate with the whole home owners association thing. then we saw garfield two, and that was definitely a dud. soooo bad. soo very bad. like beyond terrible. bill murray! what happened? sigh. but the next week cars and pirates was coming and jolene and i really wanted to go, but it didn't work out, as we were kind of at adventureland and then packing up to leave. but ohmigosh! i love cars. i've seen it three times now!
these are austin's shoes. (we had to finally throw my adidas out) how did they gets so dirty you ask? we went splunking. aka, climbing around in really muddy caves for eight hours. it was totally wicked!!! we went with our uncle kelvin from dad's side of the family... well it's kind of just him and grandma and grandpa on that side, but w/e. not worrying about that anymore! ha! and anyways, so at the maquoketa caves, there are about sixteen? i think caves that you just kind of crawl into all day, some are really big and some are really, really tight, or they'll be tight and then open up into a larger room, our favorite was the wye cave. you had to climb down first, it was kind of like this hole in the ground, and then there was a really big room and from there you squeezed through a hole that was
just larger than uncle kelvin and then it was a big room , and then from there you could go one of two ways. the one way there was this permenant... like dip and then rise and then dip in the ground from where a ton of people had crawled through on their knees and the other you could stoop through to a certain point and then it of course gets to small or tight to go any further, but we spent an hour in that particular cave alone, and oh yea... there's lots of water in these caves, and the water is all really wet and really cold.
darn it, their going backwards. anyways. sooo for that night, the fourth that is, we went over to grand mound, which is like one of the tinest towns ever, but every year they put on an outofthisworld fire works display, people come all the way up from the quad cities to see it, but lucky for us, my great aunt happens to have a back yard from which you can see most of the fireworks! yay! and laura got a little scared, but the kelly and katie absolutely loved it! half of the time kelly was singing this song about banging booming fireworks or something. it was great.
okay, so this is the insanely amazing view from my aunt and uncles backyard...it's kind of like their backyard, and then a big cliff, and then the mississippi river. they had the fourth of july party there/their son just graduated and is now a real police man thing. lots of fun!
