Mississippi

Mississippi is Kaia's new favorite word! We've been spending some time checking out some awesome new parks and exploring the river! We discovered an awesome park right on the water, which has become one of our favorite new places! It's been so great having such beautiful weather so that we've been able to get out and enjoy being outside!!

Walking on the River trail

What a great model!

Quite possibly the coolest playground ever...it's just like a treehouse!

Driving the boat

Watching the paddleboat turn around

We also went to Eagle Point Park, which gives a great view of the river! You can also see into Wisconsin and Illinois from here!

Field of Dreams!

A few weeks ago we went to the Field of Dreams! We had a lot of fun and Kaia loved the baseball field!

Ready to go, Mom!

Playing catch with Daddy

Safe!

Running the bases. Kaia could've done this for hours!

In the corn! Kaia loved it!

Ta Da!

Last Days of Summer

Here are some pictures from the last days of August and our last days in our old house. It was very bittersweet to move-this was the 1st place Kaia was old enough to understand as home and when we left I told her to say "bye bye old house." She said "bye bye old house. bye bye home." I'll admit I got a little teary-eyed. We'll miss all of our friends and the fun we had there. But we're very excited about our new opportunity and are already meeting new friends and love our new house. We look forward to making lots of new memories!

Kaia's favorite thing to do on our walks: picking flowers and blowing on them!
I did it!!

Checking out the water

One of the views we'll miss most from our walks at night!

Kaia and Mamaw at Grandma Vi's birthday party.

We were so happy we got to see Grandma Vi before we moved! We had her birthday party at Jack and Paula's the weekend before our move!

We had dinner at the Waglers and Kaia had so much fun playing with Finnean! Finnean is good at standing on 1 leg!

Ready, Set, Go!!

Loving push pops!

Silly kiddos!

All dressed up and jumping on her trampoline!

We went to the state fair with Uncle Jon and Kaia loved the animals!! She got to pet a horse!!

Waving at the cow!

We made it!

We successfully made the move to our new house and are getting settled in! We've been here a week and are slowly getting unpacked. We had a few issues with some of our furniture after we moved that we've been dealing with this week, but mostly it went really smoothly. For those who don't know, Josh is going back to finish his last year of seminary, so we're in for 1 more year of schooling! He did 2 years before going to law school, so just 1 year left! We are surrounded by fellow seminarians and their families in our development, so we're enjoying getting to know lots of new faces and Kaia is having fun making lots of new friends! We love our new house and the dogs are settling in well also-there are lots of new dogs for them to make friends with too! We just got our internet, so I'll be posting some pictures soon!

Happy 2nd Birthday!!

Our little Maisy girl turned 2 on Friday the 13th!! We're going to take that as a good luck charm! She celebrated by playing the playground at the mall, doing some shopping, and going out to dinner with Nana and Papa! On Saturday she had a great time celebrating at Chuck E. Cheese's with our family and friends! She definitely knew it was her birthday and she kept singing "Happy Birthday to Me!" We had a little trouble getting her to go down for her nap Saturday before her party because she kept saying "party" and "birthday cake." But we finally got one in and then she got to go party! We had a blast playing all the games and were exhausted by the end. She loves all of her presents and was excited to get some money to spend. My favorite quote came when Kaia opened one of her cards and found some money inside: "Money go to Target...buy toys! Happy Birthday to me!!"

With Nana and Papa after her birthday dinner!

Ready to go to her party!

Getting the first glimpse of her cake!!

Balloons! Her theme was Minnie Mouse.

Dancing with her cousins to the band.

Ski ball!

Games!! You can see the headband was quickly discarded.

We were going to go with the Minnie Mouse theme for her cake, but she loves Bolt so much that we ended up having to do a Bolt cake!

Cake! Yum!!

Opening her cards!!

Pictures!!

A couple weeks ago we had our friends Keith and Estelle, from Cast of Thousands Photography, take our family pictures!! Miss Maisy decided she only wanted to smile if she was running, so that made things difficult, but they did an awesome job and we're really excited with the way the pictures turned out! Estelle was the one who took our wedding pictures, and she's awesome! If anyone around the QCA or Iowa City is looking for a great photographer I'd definitely recommend her!! Their website is http://www.castofthousandsphotography.com/. Here are a couple of my favorites.

Zoo!!

This past Saturday we made the trek to the Omaha Zoo. We've been talking about going all summer and realized that this was the last weekend we'd have a chance to go before we move. Plus, the weather was gorgeous! So we headed west and had an awesome time. Neither Josh nor I have ever been there, but everyone we know who has been recommends it. We definitely do too!! There was so much to see and do. My favorites were the tigers and gorillas. Josh and Kaia's favorite was the aquarium. It was really amazing to go through the tunnel and be surrounded by sharks and other sea creatures! Kaia liked it so much that, out of all the animals to take home as a souvenir, she chose a shark! I took a ton of pictures, so there are quite a few on here...I had a hard time deciding what to post!

Kaia decided she needed to nibble her toes on the drive over.

Silly girl!

The white tiger was taking a nap

It was so awesome to be so close to the tigers!! This is literally how close I was...I didn't use the zoom on my camera at all.

Kaia loved the misters!

A gorilla! You can see the observation bubble in the background...

Kaia in the observation bubble. Love this picture!! What an amazing thing to be so close!

Penguins!

I love his "face"

I'm glad there was a wall of glass between this guy and me.

Wow!! Looking up at all the fish!

Shark!!

Just chillin.

Kaia and her new bff...Buzz Lightyear.

And a picture from after church last weekend. Kaia is singing just like Mommy!