Last weekend, Anna and I took a trip to her grandparents’ house to get away from all of the college stress, and for Anna’s birthday. The little trip up to Manchester, Iowa, was incredibly fun. It was full of new experiences like hand cranking ice cream, looking around their farm with tons of history, and relaxing from the troubles of the world.

First, her grandparents picked us up from her dorm room and took us to get Dairy Queen. Sadly, I was unable to eat much because it was made in the same fryer as fish. So, I had to eat a burger. I couldn’t even get fries because of it. But Anna was really nice and bought me another burger since I couldn’t eat anything else. I will say that the burgers and Dilly bars were great, though.

Then we got to their house, outside of Manchester. There were tons of forests, fields, and all of them were planted by them! I was impressed by the number of amenities around, and all of the nature. The entire area of trees was planted by them. You never would have guessed by how dense the trees are, and how big they’ve gotten. Anna even got to paint a sign when she was younger, naming the little area. They showed me that too, and that was very fun to see. You can see she’s still proud of it to this day.

We explored more of the property, and they brought me out to their barns. One of the barns dated back centuries, and even the original wooden beams were still intact. It was fascinating to see the history in it. Their entire property seemed to have a lot of history as well, their property containing two native american burial grounds, as well as the barn.

They kept two horses still, and it was fun to see them. I’ve taken care of some horses in my time, so it wasn’t anything particularly new to see. It was fun nonetheless. I got to see the areas they kept them, and their really nice tack room. Apparently, they’d gotten a ton of awards and sold some really good horses in their days. The ones left were all lovey, and Anna got to name those, too, when she was younger. They had a whiteboard with names of all the kids that had been there, and I, too, had written on it. It felt kind of nice to be included.We went out to meet them, and for Anna to take pictures with the DSLR camera she brought. I was really jealous because I wanted my own, but she took a lot of pictures for both of us. She got some pictures of her horses, and so did I. The horse decided to slobber all over my sweatshirt, which her grandma washed for me. Luckily, all the stains got out.

After, we had some dinner and made ice cream with a hand crank, a tradition they all used to do on birthdays. They each get a little taste from the mixer, and they don’t waste even a little bit. Anna got what she could, but they got me my own ice cream from the store since the ice cream is made with eggs. But making it and seeing Anna so happy for it was worth sticking around.

The next day, we slept in late, drank hot cocoa, and had popcorn by the fire. I think we both needed a lot of sleep, because all of the stress had piled up. And for the first time in a bit, I had an actual bed that wasn’t made of rocks.

It was a fun weekend overall, and I got a lot of needed sleep. Sometimes, when life on campus gets a little hard, it’s nice to have a good break.