Winona, Minnesota! (K Family Reunion)

Every other year Jeremy's extended family has a big reunion where they eat, talk, eat, and talk some more. Since his family is originally from Minnesota, (well, after they came over from Ireland) that's usually where they hold it, and Jeremy's never been before. He met several of his great aunts and uncles (there were 8 children in his Grandpa's family) at his Grandma K's funeral, and again at his Grandpa's (2 years ago - I met them too). So when we got there (after only about 4 hours of driving - child's play!) we knew about 5 of the hundreds (I exaggerate) of people there.

The drive was actually quite beautiful. Who knew you just have to drive north in Iowa instead of east, west, or south to see some different country? ;-) Dubuque was very pretty, as was most of Wisconsin that we drove through. I'm sure it's another story in winter, but in summer they're gorgeous. We weren't on freeways, and saw a lot of cool little towns on our way to Winona (right on the Wisconsin/Minn border). The kids did pretty well, but were super excited to stop, especially since our campground included a big sandy playground. I think that would have been the last time we saw Reilly that day, if we hadn't dragged him back for meals...

Here are Reilly and Jaina, pouring sand and gravel over each others' heads.

And a close up of Jaina's hair...

We both had a great time (especially Jeremy) visiting with all sorts of unknown (but often familiar-looking) relatives all throughout the day Saturday. Our one big surprise was how cold it was. We had come dressed for summer (with nothing but shorts and t-shirts to our backs and names) and it was downright chilly. Finally after an hour or two I make the trek into town to find some cheap but warm reinforcements. After some creative clearance-rack shopping, and a couple of souvenir "Minnesota" sweatshirts, we were all set. And I only took one wrong turn (and re-visited Wisconsin for 30 seconds) on the way back. Jeremy had programmed the GPS, but apparently I didn't know where to look for it. :)

Here is our cute little family sporting our new hoodies (that we can now add to our collection of like 15 others):

Here is Jaina in her size 4/5 jacket (smallest one Wal-mart had) with the sleeves rolled up like 4 times...

We had gotten the kids up at 6:30 to leave (they've been waking up at 8-ish since we got back from AZ) and then Jaina didn't get a nap until after 2:30 (she's been going down at 1) when I finally took pity on her and drove around for a bit until she fell asleep. She didn't get ENOUGH sleep though, and was grumpy for several hours after that.

Even Reilly was getting pretty tired by evening. This is his second change of clothes. The first ones were already filthy with sand and bubble soap, and this set contained pants (Wal-mart, again)...

After a few hours of fussing and complaing, Jaina was finally feeling good again.

Good enough to sample the local dirt (we don't have any in Davenport, just gravel, grass, and mud).

It was a really fun reunion, and we enjoyed meeting all of those cool K relatives. He's Jeremy going through a lot of the old pictures he brought with them. They had some great names and dates for him, and one relative (Anne, on the right, in black,) has even done a lot of their geneology. We're definitely excited to get with her on that!

We got to stay at Great-Aunt Joyce and -Uncle Greg's house (now our kids have two Aunt Joyce's and two Uncle Greg(g)'s...) and it was a lot of fun. It was all set up for their grandkids, and as tired (and dirty) as our munchkins were at about 8, I had a hard time dragging them away from the toys to get into the tub. They both zonked right out when we put them to bed and slept well.

The next morning (after staying up til 11 visiting) we visited some more, had yogurt, doughnuts, and waffles for breakfast, and attended the Winona Branch. It was pretty cool. (Most of the K's are staunch Catholics - his aunt and uncle had already been to 7 am mass!) We packed up our stuff and headed home, as Jeremy tried to convince me how cool it would be to live in Winona. :) Definitely worth the trip, but boy are we tired of traveling! Maybe we'll just lay low for a while. Our house could sure use the attention...