the (mis)adventures of jenna

I am exhausted. My house isn’t clean, I have no fresh groceries, the laundry is piled so high in the dark’s basket that any new additions slide off onto the floor, and I haven’t planned my menus. But…I actually don’t really care. I’ll do it later. Why?

Because I went to Iowa this weekend to surprise The Brother for his graduation!!! It was 24 hours of driving for 36 hours in the state, but every moment was worth it. (Well, except for the hour we sat in traffic on the way up, which was lame.)

This is how we all felt as we began our drive to Iowa - eager, cute, and excited about surprising Andrew and the fam with our presence

Then we ran into wicked construction and sat on the freeway for, combined, an hour. It was frustrating and lame. But, as usual, we persevered.

We arrived in Des Moines at 2:30 on Saturday morning. We slept in Grandpa and Grandma’s RV and woke at 6:30 to get ready and drive to Ames in the rain. Due to the rainy and disgusting weather, we did not have our camera out to capture the looks on Andrew and the other family member’s faces when we wandered into the graduation reception in his class’ honor.

(Aside: Pops got Lasik and we haven’t seen him since, so we walked into Hoover and were looking for the fam. We - literally - ran into this guy on a cell phone who looked quite a lot like my Pops and had a tie exactly like my Pops. Suddenly that guy who looked like my Pops said, “HEY! What are you doing here!” and hung up his cell phone. It was my Pops. And we didn’t recognize him, we recognized his tie.)

Once we were finished shocking Pops, Joey and I moved over and stood directly in Andrew’s line of sight to see how long it would take for him to figure out what was going on. He finally saw us and made his traditional shocked sound (”GAAAAAAH!!!”) and staggered around a few steps with a stymied look on his face.

“Whaaaaaat are you doooooing here?” He stammered. It was hilarious.

Then we all sat down to eat our breakfast.

Pops immediately spilled cream cheese on his shoe.

We took a picture as just us siblings, and then one with just Sister and I. Sister, as you can see, felt monstrous sickly and could barely stand, much less smile. But she was a very good sport and played along with us.

I really like this creepy one of The Kid.

The first item on the agenda was Andrew’s departmental ceremony. Andrew looks so terribly giddy in this picture because five minutes before the thing started, Joey walked up on the stage with the camera, made the guys around him scoot out of the way, and took a picture. (We figured we oughta do it up right and embarrass Andrew as much as possible all in one day.)

We ate lunch at Andrew and Laura’s apartment. (It was delish - Laura made some super good food and a yummy pie.) Andrew then went out to wait for the bus to take him to Hilton. This picture was taken right before we all realized that the buses don’t run on Saturdays and someone was going to have to take him. A mad dash ensued to see who would take him, which car would go, and a quick count of heads to make sure everyone would be able to squish into the remaining cars to get there.

We had these signs which we held up when Andrew walked in to Pomp and Circumstance, and when he walked across the stage to get his diploma. He was quite unsure whether to be pleased or embarrassed. (We also had kazoo-type squeakers which we blew as much as we wanted and made a prodigiously loud commotion.)

About an hour and a half into the ceremony, Pops got bored. So he took my glasses from me and called his parents who were on the other end of the row (dozing, I think) and made them look down to see him in my glasses. Grams began laughing so hard she started crying, and Gramps was unsure of what to think.

This is my cute mom, shortly after Pops gave me back my glasses.

Mom, Andrew, Laura and Pops…all proud of Andrew for finally graduating.

I think this picture is gross, but I felt obligated to include it.

So after Andrew graduated, we went to Cedar Rapids for a few hours, where I tromped around in the pasture with Dad to check on his cows, and we went to church and caused problems for Dad while he tried to teach a Sunday School class on how to deal with your In-Laws.

The Kid tried to get Henry to like him. He was marginally successful.

We ate a speedy meal of Chinese and celebrated Mother’s Day with Mommy. Henry had to wait in the car. Then we hit the road, Jack, and drove, drove, drove to get back to Dallas before 3:00 a.m. (We made it at 1:15, which is something of a miracle and record.)

Henry slept the whole way back, and looks in this picture like Joey and I pretty much feel today. But…the whirlwind trip was worth it.