A Special Mother's Day Treat...

I had an early Mother's Day treat. My dear husband took me to Pella, IA to celebrate a little of my Dutch heritage and enjoy the tulips. Iowa is home to two communities where Dutch immigrants settled in the mid 1800's. The Dutch heritage remains strong in these communities and each spring they celebrate it with their own tulip festivals.

The tulip is my very favorite flower and the tulip beds were amazing to say the least. This post is somewhat picture heavy...enjoy!
The cobblestone streets are lined with tulips up and down it's sides. The historical society replants the bulbs every year to insure top quality blooms for the festival...lots & lots of work!The Scholte House tulip bed alone consisted of 32,000 tulip bulbs...and it is totally amazing.
Pella has a town square...something quite common in the southern parts of Iowa. The streets are lined with fun boutiques, dutch bakeries, butcher shops, a working 1850's grain wind mill, klokkenspel. The retail plaza (The Molengracht) has a dutch canal and working drawbridge that runs throughout the shopping area.
Did I mention who was along with Grandma and Grandpa? Yep, Beckham and his Mommy and Daddy joined us for the day.
Pretty flowers + Beckham ='s lots & lots of pics!!
The tulips were taller then Beckham.
Grandma was the paparazzi for the day...
Beckhams highlight of the day was the water fountain. We threw probably 50 cents worth of pennies in the fountain....lots & lots of wishes were made. After Grandma's purse was drained of pennies he realized he could extend the water fun by just picking pennies out of the fountain and toss them in again. It was getting to be lunch time and I wondered how we were going to peel him away from the fountain...but after some bargaining between Momma & Beckham we were on our way to enjoy a picnic of pizza at the town square park.
While eating our pizza I noticed Beckham had spotted a young girl with a small dog. Let's just say he was more interested in the puppy then the pizza. He was somewhat confused by the whole sitting on the grass thing and eating there too. So a couple bites into his pizza he got brave and tootled over to see the puppy. I'm just sitting there, camera in hand, knowing what's going to happen...
Yep, puppy dog kisses!
After our picnic someone was getting tired,
&
it was time to head home,
but not before stopping at the bakery...
You cannot go home without a dutch pastry or two, or three, or four...

Have a good day,

Brenda