Mom, Aunt Cathy and I went and saw a play at Loras College last weekend. It's the second time this year I've seen Mouse Trap and it was good again! :) We hit downtown Dubuque before the play. I'd been wanting to get to a store called Calico Bean. It was great. They had a ton of everything. This was a wall of colored sugars, sprinkles, etc. So pretty. They had a ton of neat things. Reminded me a little of String Town grocery store in Kalona, but better prices.
My picture of mom and Cathy disappeared off my phone! It was so cute. They were ready an e-mail on mom's phone w/ their reading glasses on.
Nick and I have been chugging a long this month. We're still really looking forward to vaca, so we've been largely worthless and trying to plan small pre-party trips to tide us over until lift off.
We hit Pella this weekend, which has been on my list for a long while. What a lovely hamlet. :) We were both really impressed. I've been wanting to hit the Tulip Festival, but I wanted to see the town before the festival. It's difficult to get into shops and bakery's and move around during those times, so I wanted to take a trip there first.
We made a quick stop off in Kalona for a bag of cheese curds and we were on our way!
The day was cold and rainy, but that's never really slowed us down. It did result in a couple arguments over holding umbrellas. Apparently, "hold my umbrella while I take this picture." doesn't necessarily mean the umbrella is going to be held over your head, it's just going to be held... off to the side... while I take pictures. :) Lord, bless him.
Anyway, once we got the umbrella situation sorted out, it was all good.
The tulips were already in full bloom and everywhere! It was gorgeous. I ran into a friend of ours who lives there a couple weeks ago, and she said that the tulips were ahead of schedule and that they would ship in the tulips for the festival if need be. The Dutch take their parties seriously, I guess. Nick also mentioned that Pella had the most millionaires per ca pita in the country at one point in the now to distant past. The town seemed to reflect that level of money, but maybe I was making it up... hard to say. It could have been all the dilapidated towns we went thru prior to getting there that made it look really good too. :)
I had read about the famous "Dutch Letters," a pastry the Dutch are known for, so I was looking forward to hitting the bakery! We got there and the line was out the door! We probably waited about a 1/2 hour to get to the front of the line, but it was well worth the wait!
Finally made it to the front!
A 1/2 eaten Dutch Letter. They're a little like a flaky croissant with a cinnamon paste in the middle. Delicious!
From there we wandered down to a shopping area. There were several cute shops, and a very cool bridge/canal area. There were a lot of tourists around taking pictures. Small tour of some sort was going thru.
Cool canal area.
Classic Nick Timmerman. :)
Wearing some Dutch clogs! :)
The midgets stopped by the other day! The girls love going thru my shoes. :)
Everyone took a personality test while they were here. T was working on his test.
I've been scanning in some old pictures, and these felt appropriate given the ones posted above. :) I shot everything in B&W back in the day... not sure that was my best move... but ahh well.
My starter garden!! I planted some of them outside a couple weeks ago... Tomatoes and peppers yet to go in the ground... not sure what to do w/ them exactly. :)
Jack being lazy. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment