Iowa Trip: Part Two

MADISON COUNTY BRIDGE FESTIVAL

On Saturday, we got up to an overcast sky threatening rain, but trekked 30 minutes to cute and quaint Madison County anyway (never rained on us thank goodness). After all, we couldn't miss the "festival." The only damper on the day was that Tom had to stay home to study and have some downtime - which he never does with his hectic med school schedule.

Only in Iowa would they have corn for the kids to play in. . .

Obsessed with the idea of a funnel cake, I bought one only to find out it is DISGUSTING! So Talin kindly took it over for me -- and ate the WHOLE thing! The background of this picture shows how cute the little town square is in Madison County. At the center lies the courthouse and it's grounds and then, in a perfect square surrounding it, these cute shops line up across the street. The four streets around the courthouse were filled with booths and festival food which kind of grossed us out considering how excited we were for the food before we got there.

The farmer's market at the festival. I loved these squash (?) or whatever they are because they looked like a bunch of geese. I have been entertained and excited by the idea of gardening lately, but this is above and beyond . . . only in the Midwest, I suppose.

THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY


After the festival, we grabbed a bite to eat at a disgusting Pizza Hut. It was very hard to find any restaurants in that small town! It grossed us out and then the waitress had the audacity to try to charge us $7.00 for 4 waters! Water that we never touched because it was disgusting tap water - if you know any of my siblings, you know that we are obsessed with how our water tastes. One of my sisters once decided she could only drink water out of plastic cups rather than glass. Are we a little weird? I don't care as long as my water tastes good!

The Cutler-Donahue Bridge located in the city park.

Maybe not one of THE bridges, but I loved this quaint little bridge in the city park. And I love this cute picture of Megan and her boys (and her cute stomach).

The Tower. We don't know any history of this tower except that it's in the city park and everyone visits it, so we went. I thought it was awesome and the view from the top was amazing. Talin went up with me, but then refused to go down with me helping him so I had to go get Megan to do the mom-thing and carry him down before he went hysterical. In his defense, I will say that it was very high up there!

I figure I should include any pictures of Megan and I together that aren't too bad so that we can actually document pictures of us instead of just kids. This rather artistic picture was taken by almost 4-year old Collin. We were laughing the whole time because it looked like he was photographing the sky, but as you can see, he knew what he was doing.

I LOVE mazes and so I made Megan stop for this on the way out of the city park. We had a race: Talin and I against Megan and Collin. Guess who won? The maze-lover of course! It reminded me of the awesome maze they have at Hampton Court in England.

The birthplace of John Wayne in Madison County.

Holliwell Bridge. This is the first bridge we actually drove to, but it's funny because we both needed to pee so badly that we didn't even get out - I just snapped a photo and we were off in search of the loo. We figured we had three more bridges to go.

Hogback Bridge. I love the inside and it was amazing how bumpy that ride across there must have been for wagons or anything.

The only picture of all four of us. The boys were so fabulously good the whole time for us - especially considering how busy and tiring the day before at the zoo had been.

Collin and I with the cornfields of Iowa.

Cedar Bridge. Right about this time, I was on the phone for a while with Nate hearing about how horrible my children were being at that moment. Lovely. Luckily it passed and that night Nate was in much better spirits and on better terms with the girls as they headed to his parent's house. There's nothing like Grandma and Grandpa when mom's gone.

My nephews love me! Talin and Collin are so stinking cute and good that I told Megan that she's never allowed to complain to me about her boys again! I mean, what kind of 5-year old will just go up to his room, turn on his cd player with classical music or Sarah Brightman and then color for an hour?! He is so darn cute!