Tulip Festival 2023- Street Scrubbing.

On Saturday, we scrubbed streets in the afternoon parade. It's always special to dress up and take pictures each year! Thankful we had good weather and made some fun family memories. Happy Tulip Festival!

The women scrub and the men throw the water.

Our beautiful Dutch girls!

Fun with Grandpa and Grandma too!

Love our family!

Tulip Festival 2023- Parades, Dutch dancing, and more rides.

Norah is in second grade this year, so she was old enough to participate in Dutch dancing! She did a great job and it was so cute to watch. They practiced at school, with one after school practice, and performed three times during the afternoon parades, twice on the route for each parade, so she did the dance six times! There were a couple different songs in the routine, all in Dutch.

They had to have a partner that was supposed to be a boy, which Norah didn't love. Her original partner was a boy but then he backed out, so then she was happy to get a girl partner (because more girls than boys do it, so there isn't enough boys). 

We got to watch a few parades with the Ragsdales, our good friends who moved away last year but came back for the festival. So glad we could see them!

Seeing the Pride of the Dutchmen marching band is always a highlight of the parade!

The Queen and her court. There is street scrubbing before the afternoon parades to make the streets clean for the Queen.

Some of our favorite floats.

They throw out candy at the Thursday night parade, so they were waiting for candy!

Tulip Festival is the best!

Riding some more rides- the girls were really brave this year and tried some of the bigger ones! This one was called Cliff Hanger, and you laid on your stomach and felt like you were flying.

The girls rode on a float for the Friday night parade!

Riding the Tornado with Grandpa! We got to see some of both sides of the family and it was great!

Kley loves to march in the alumni band during the Saturday night parade, that's always a fun finale to watch him. 

Big news- we are moving!

Big news from the De Jongs- we are moving! We will still be in the same town and are actually only moving a couple houses away from where we are now. It's been so neat to see how God has weaved the pieces together. We will move in June! We are thankful to stay in the same neighborhood and that God provided this new house for us that we pray will be a good fit for our family for many years. Many prayers are being answered in this home! Our same neighborhood, bigger garage, great main living space, and a bigger/better basement for hosting and for the girls to hang out with their friends as they get older. Now for lots of packing! It will be bittersweet to say goodbye to our house because we really love it, but are looking forward to our new house too. 

Tulip Festival 2023- Ride Night.

We love Tulip Festival! Tulip Festival is a special celebration our little Dutch Iowa town does every year. There are rides, food, parades, and people dress up in Dutch costumes. It's one of our favorite times of the year! Ellory's most favorite last year was a snow cone, and she had been talking for weeks before about getting one again!

Top of the ferris wheel!

Ferris wheel with my girls and nephew Will. I love rides and most in Kley's family don't, so I'm frequently designated adult chaperone on the rides and I love it!

I love that the girls still wanted to ride the carousel this year with Will. :)

The giant slide is always a favorite too!

They didn't have the kid roller coaster last year and we were excited to have it back again this year!

The big boat was fun too!

Holding hands in line- the sweetest. :)

Ride night is the best! (Ride night is the kickoff to Tulip Festival, where they sell wristbands for $20 and you can ride unlimited rides.) We had lots of fun!