arts fest!

this weekend brought pete, betsy, henry and clara to town for the iowa arts fest (you can see their post here). it also brought some crazy heat and humidity on saturday. we managed to get in a good hour of...

...meat on a stick...
...picnicking (who knew that has a "k" in it?) under a tree on the pentacrest...
...watching the leaves and being an adorable 5-month-old (clara only) before we had all we could stand and headed back home for some indoor activities, including...
...wooden bird house painting...
...and front porch swinging.

on sunday, we had a breakfast whip-up (as rob would call it) with eggs and homemade bagels from up the street. the decker siblings wore their commemorative t-shirts. i tried to get a photo where neither rob nor betsy were eating (special thanks to betsy for not posting the unbearably horrendous photo of me eating pizza at pagliai's) or making crazy eyes...

...that's better!

a few hours later, rob went in for a full day/evening of work helping with the flood effort. he and his co-workers have mostly been pulled off their projects to help coordinate volunteers and relief efforts. the iowa river has gotten dangerously high over the past week and water levels continue to rise. he estimates that there are over a million sandbags in place at the moment. unfortunately, a crazy winter of ice and snow storms has given way to a spring and summer of heavy rains, tornadoes and flooding. maybe he'll post some photos here as he did with the 2006 tornado. keep an eye out...