Four Days in Fort Dodge

I think I said this in one of my previous posts, but I had these lofty goals of blogging much more frequently while we were on the road. That was before I realized that as soon as we left one place, we were too busy enjoying the next stop for me to sit down and keep the blog up-to-date. To further confuse things, I've been posting real-time, albeit shorter, cellphone picture posts. So, for anyone still keeping track of our continuing summer adventures (anyone? anyone??), after enjoying a wonderful first week of July in Minnesota with Brian's aunt, uncle, cousin and her family, we headed south to spend four days in Brian's hometown of Fort Dodge, Iowa to visit the rest of Brian's family that we hadn't seen yet.

Visiting Great-Grandma Johnson and Great-Aunt Joyce. We were lucky to see them a few times during our short stay and Ellie became very fond of the baby doll given to her by her great-grandma Johnson. It laughs when you squeeze the belly and that makes Ellie laugh, too.

Great-Grandma Hammer.

I love the looks on everyone's faces here.

Good-bye hugs.

We met Brian's sister Shelby for dinner (and brought his brother Austin along!).

Ellie was fascinated by the beading on her Aunt Shelby's shirt. She still loves all things shiny.

So serious sometimes.

I know this is backseat photo overkill, but this is the position (holding her feet) in which Ellie spent the drive back after meeting Shelby for dinner (watching a movie of course). Many movies were viewed in this position.

Lots of family and friends have asked how Ellie is doing with all this travel. Thankfully, Ellie has taken the travel itself as well as the complete life change in stride and has really been a dream to travel with -- most of the time. She's still a two-year-old, and I often have to remind myself of that on those travel days that are more difficult. Overall though, she's easily occupied with books and stickers and as long as we have our ace in the hole (our iPad), she really is content to hang out in the backseat and enjoy the ride. Back to our Fort Dodge adventures...

Our last day in town Brian's Aunt Barb had us over to her and Larry's house for lunch to include the most delicious apple pie I've ever eaten -- and she was was kind enough to share the recipe with me! I plan on making it as soon as we move into our house in Germany (it will be a while, we won't be able to start looking until we get there!). Meanwhile, Ellie was fascinated by Barb's wood train set.

 

Our stops to various family member's homes were punctuated by stops at some of our favorite restaurants and eateries. Most (okay, all) of those places are unfortunately not the kindest to our waistlines but since we're in town so rarely, visit them we must! No trip to Fort Dodge is complete without getting a cookie from Larita's. It's really the frosting you're going for.

Don't mistake that look in her eyes for fear. It's actually the look of shock that something could taste that good (it was her first Larita's cookie).

This place was also on the short list and we probably went there almost every night.

There's something about these mom-and-pop-run mid-west soft serve spots (and I'm not talking about DQ) that you just can't find anywhere else. The Dariette serves the most amazing homemade lemon soft serve that they twist with a different flavor each week. The week we were in town they were twisting the lemon with black raspberry. Delicious.

Ellie certainly seemed to agree.

An ice cream happy dance.

One evening after a Dariette run, Brian drove us around the main street area and I took some surprisingly cool sunset pictures of downtown Fort Dodge.

It was a very quick four days, but we were so thankful to enjoy visiting Brian's family while we were in town. Next up, St. Louis!