Iowa: Day 2

Iowa: Day 2 was a whole lotta nothing.  After the adventures in Chicago and the long drive back to Iowa, no one was really in a hurry to do anything exciting.  I wanted to go to church, so when we got up in the morning, Jasmine called the only Catholic church in town and found out that mass was at 10, which gave me plenty of time to take a shower and get ready to go.  I had also decided that I was famished and nothing less than McDonald's for breakfast was going to satisfy me.  So after I was all ready to go, Jon and I climbed in the car and headed five minutes down the road to the only McDonald's in town.  Jon had gone out the night before to get some groceries and brought me back a huge box of Luvs diapers for Punkin, so I bought breakfast for everyone to pay them back.  After hardly eating anything for the last day and a half, those two little sausage burritos tasted like manna from heaven.  Of course I spilled some schmutz on my shirt, though.  Go fig!

St. John's Catholic Church, where I went to mass

After McDonald's, we were still way early for church and I had no desire to go sit and be stared at by the locals, so Jon drove me around through Independence and showed me where they take Silas to play, and where his mom lives, among other places.  When we eventually got to the church, Jon dropped me off out front and I went inside.  The church looks a lot bigger from the outside than it really is.  I liked it, though.  It was old, and it smelled like a church.  Everything was wood and glass.  I sat halfway up on the middle aisle and was very happy that no one seemed to be staring at me - all the people were really nice.

I had a moment of panic, though.  During communion, everyone filed themselves out of their aisles - no ushers standing there to make sure that everyone waited patiently - and we stood in line to go to the front of the church.  But I quickly realized that people were making the line in the middle of the aisle and the outsides of the aisle were for people heading back to their seats.  So I got confused with where I was supposed to stand, especially because I knew I wanted wine and no one in front of me was getting it.  I couldn't figure out whether I was supposed to get wine, then head back down the middle aisle, or get wine and then make my way to the outside of the pews and come in from the side.  It was all very confusing, but thankfully the guy two people ahead of me got wine and I just followed him back down the middle aisle.

Part of downtown Independence

After mass, I went outside to wait for Jon and took some pictures of the town.  It's a very cute little town - the epitome of small town America.  There's one main grocery store called Fareway, and then the tiniest little Super Wal-Mart I've ever seen in my life.  It also has a cute little main street with a pharmacy, a hardware store and some specialty shops.  It really does remind me of Main Street at the Magic Kingdom at Disney World.  It's the kind of town that I would love to live in one day - it seems like a great place to raise kids and know they're going to turn out okay and with wholesome family values.


Shortly after I got back from church, we had lunch and then the kids went down for a nap.  Jasmine needed groceries for the week, so she and I went to Wal-Mart while the kids slept and Jon kept an eye on them.  We got pulled pork for sandwiches, chicken and tomato sauce for pasta, salad stuff and grapes for snacks.  Jasmine also got Punkin a little "Iowa Princess" t-shirt and I bought Punkin a Dora blanket since Silas has his own blanket that he's protective over.  I was worried Punkin would wake up and freak out when she saw I wasn't there, but once we got back we found they were still sleeping.  Jasmine spent the rest of the day making pulled pork and pasta so we would have stuff for dinner and lunches for the next few days, and the kids spent the rest of the day in the playroom alternately playing and fighting with each other till bathtime and bedtime.

Ah, toddlers.  They're awesome.