On Sunday we hung out at the hotel in the morning and went swimming. The water park in the hotel was fantastic. It had this giant contraption that you had to traverse in order to get to the water slide at the top. Along the way there were probably a hundred different booby traps that would soak people down below. At the very top was this 1000 gallon bucket that would dump every 10 minutes on the kids below, which they loved. It had three water slides all together along with a zero entry pool with a slide that Emily played in most of the day. They had great life guards all over the place that they kept on their toes. They had these plastic babies that the supervisors would carry around and suddenly chuck these things in the water to test the life guards response time. Jon and I followed thse guys around watching this for a while, laughing our heads off at how strange this was and how seriously they took it. Jon and I had my cousin Kurt grab one of the babies and chuck it in the water slide and sat back and watched the fireworks. Lots of fun.

After the pool, we went to a family mass at the church in town. From there we took the kids on a tour around town. We hung out at the Kramer farm and went for a long hayride around the farms and through the country side. From there we went to Connie and Jim's place so the kids could ride horses. They have 30+ horses and a bunch of steers their kids use for competitive team roping. Emily was cautioned about touching the electric fence, so what does she do? She touches the fence. She learned the hard way. We went back that night, swam some more and then the fellas hit the casino before calling it a night.

The next morning we got up, swam (someone pooped in the pool, so we had to clear out), packed and headed out around 11ish. We got back from Iowa late Monday night around 10:30. It was a long, long drive. We made it out in about 8.5 hours, back in 10.5.

I've posted all of the pictures of the trip here.