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By Tuesday morning, Lea and I had our whole day mapped out.  It started with a jog along the Lake, a shower at Reid and Carla’s, lunch with Lea’s grandparents, some trap shooting in the afternoon, and dinner back at the house.  Bring it on!

The rain had been off and on all weekend, and  the skies were looking pretty spectacular.  Like I said – this is prairiedise.

The run was great, and after, we went to Anna’s house for a shower.  And to play with Anna.  And to take pictures of Anna. 🙂

OK, Anna.  Show me how you do the slide.

Good!  Now show me your Rolling Stone magazine cover.

Fantastic!  Now do something silly.  Whatever.  Have fun with it!

Oh, you’re so cute!  OK, now I want you to slap your hands on the couch like a little monkey and SCREAM!

My dear, you’ve got a future in modeling if you want it.  OK, baby, you’re off the hook.  Let’s play.

At 11 months 4 days old (we celebrated her birthday yesterday while family was in town) the girl has some fairly advanced walking skills.  Why does her standing there look so unnatural to me?  Oh wait…she’s a baby!  That’s why.

BTW – I’m terribly behind on posting these (two weeks! We’ve been busy…), and Anna is now a full time walker.

This squirmy bug can be hard to hold onto!  Just look how difficult it is for Aunt Lea to keep her wrangled.

OK, looks like you tamed the bucking bronc’.

Wait…no you didn’t!  She gone.

How can someone so little be so much fun?  It’s fair to say that we’d all worked up an appetite, which allowed us to capitalize on yet another culinary treat one can only find in Iowa.  Taco Pizza from Casey’s General Store!  Yep – a gas station.  Topped with a refried bean base, lettuce, tomato, ground beef, and loads of Doritos.  YUM.

We brought it over to Grandma and Grandpa’s.  After lunch, Anna pointed to the radio, and Arnie put on the only music he had.  Polka!

She went round and round to everyone in the room, giving everyone a chance to dance.

While we were in Clear Lake, we decided to stop some place to pick up some wine for dinner.  I’ve been coming up to see Lea’s family for more than seven years now, and I’ve always wanted to check out Lake Liquors.  How did I let it go this long?!  It may not look like much, but inside, this place has a phenomenal wine selection.  More than 500 labels from Willamette, Columbia Valley, Napa, Sonoma, Lodi, Paso Robles, Santa Barbara, Mendoza, Rioja and more.  My impression of Clear Lake just went up a notch!

Back at the house, Nonna was waiting to greet us (by that I mean, Anna) with open arms!

Part of Anna’s ritual when she first comes in the house is to stop by the iPod doc for a little Twist and Shout!

Us boys went out back to fire some arms.  I was a little rusty.

It’s a little hard to shoot tiny flying targets when you’re looking into the sun…

…so we went around to the other side of the yard to face East.

Contact!  Don was dusting these things all over the field.  Good thing they’re biodegradable.

OK, back to that wine.  We tried two new bottles.  The first is a white blend by Menage a Trois (trois = 3 grape varietals).  They have a great red blend for about $8, which means it can be anybody’s everyday drinker.  The white is also good – a blend of Moscato, Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc.  The Moscato gives it just a subtle sense of effervescence and sweetness, while the other two round out the body and fresh summeriness.

The other wine was an Old Vine Zin by Four Vines.  I couldn’t really even taste the wine; there was so much zing on the tongue it was like drinking punch.  But I think some people might like that a lot.

Judi never disappoints with her meat selection.  Reid noted that his T-bone looked a little like the African continent.

Which means this bite is hosting the World Cup!

And while there was just a little too much commotion going on last night for Anna to enjoy her personal birthday cake (the one that she can absolutely demolish with support from her parents and grandparents) we thought she might like to try it tonight.

She wasn’t quite sure what she was supposed to do with it at first.  Fortunately, as with all things that babies come in contact with for the first time, she got a few frosted fingers to her mouth to test the waters…

“Hey!  That’s pretty good.”

“Thanks for slicing a piece off for me Aunt Lea.  It’s chow time.”

“You know, I think I’ve got enough here to share.  Nonna, come open your mouth for me so I can insert the rest of this piece of cake into it.”

Papa Don was eventually the voice of reason who mentioned that she’d get a belly ache if she ate the whole thing.  I never would’ve even thought of that!  I’d be up all night rolling around in agony.  It’s good to have people looking out for you.

After dinner, as the sun was setting, I went outside to take a couple pictures around the yard.

It’s tough going to bed the last night of vacation when you know you have to go back home the next day.  Then again, that means we have almost one more full day to look forward to!