Adventures in Iowa City

So, I thought I would give an update on what we’ve been up to this summer.  Jon started his residency last month and he loves being a pediatrician.  His schedule on his first rotation was pretty crazy.  He was working 13-14 hours most days and only getting one day weekends.  He went long periods of time without seeing Penny as she was usually asleep by the time he got home.  He’s got a bit of an easier schedule now being on clinic duty, but he doesn’t like it as much.

The kids and I just try to find ways to amuse ourselves.  We’ve been taking advantage of some of the great things in Iowa City.  Be warned, this will be a very long post (I know, I know, when are they not?).  But, there will be LOTS of pictures.  Even though my college camera is not as nice as the one Penny destroyed, it is much more compact and goes on all of our adventures with us. 

Firstly, the parks.  There are tons of great parks here.  There is one about a half mile from our house that has a little splash pad that the kids can run around in and get wet.  I’m not going to lie, I’ve started to avoid this park because it’s always more crowded and wet kids are a lot of work.  There are at least five parks within two miles of our house, and probably more.  Most of them have pretty easy bike access, too.  Which is good because we are pretty much exclusive bikers now.  Jon’s parents were kind enough to help us buy a bike trailer (you guys have no idea how great it has been), and we use it to get everywhere.

Here the kids are modeling it, and their helmets.  They seem to enjoy it for the most part, but there have been some incidents of hitting, biting, and ear/hair pulling.  It is a fairly small space for two young kids to coexist in happily.  It’s a really good workout for me, but I actually enjoy it quite a bit. 

Here we are on the Iowa River Corridor trail.  It is a very pleasant place to ride.

Especially because there is a great park at one end that the kids love:

Penny ready to go down the slide at the park.

And a wider shot of the park with Ben running across the bridge.

Another park we go to I love because it has a bunch of trees that provide shade.  We went for a little ward play date, but only one other kid from the ward was there.  It was one of the few boys Ben’s age in our ward.  Seriously, his nursery group is like 15 girls and 3 boys.  He and Adam got along great:

Penny, of course, enjoyed the slide.

Another great thing about Iowa City is the Ped Mall downtown.  It is a super pleasant pedestrian mall with a bunch of great stores and restaurants.  Also, the library is right in the heart of the things.  And right outside the library is this great park:

The park is right next to a little fountain/water spout thingy that the kids like to run through.  Usually, I manage to skip this, but one of the last times we were downtown, Penny ran right into the water, so I went with it.  The kids loved it, Penny kept trying to drink the water.

Water Time VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Our next adventure was probably our biggest and my craziest.  There is a great mall on the opposite side of town in our neighboring city, Coralville.  It has a fantastic Children’s Museum that we got season passes for.  I decided to bike myself and the kids out there.  In the car, it’s probably about 7 miles.  When I’m biking with the kids, I usually try to find paths that don’t have me riding on streets.  I mapped out a path that I thought would take me mostly on bike trails and away from too many cars.  I accomplished that pretty well, but it ended up being about 9 miles.  The way to the mall is almost entirely uphill (I’m not exaggerating on this) and it was grueling with the trailer.  It took me just over an hour and I thought I was going to die when we got there and couldn’t believe I was going to have to make the trip again.  Still, I settled in and enjoyed the museum with the kiddos.  It is a great place.  There is a room full of Legos, which, needless to say, Ben loves:

And a little grocery store where the kids can shop and check each other out at the cash register (I only got pictures of Penny, and they were all so cute I couldn’t pick one):

Grocery shopping VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

And an ambulance attached to a hospital/dentist’s office:

		Little EMTs VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

There is also a cute little farm with plastic vegetables to plant and harvest and a little farm house and a barn with a slide.  And a room to build pinewood derby cars and race them, as well as golf balls down different tracks.  And an aviation room with slides and little pedal planes, and half a Cessna for the kids to play in, and a place to build stomp rockets and paper airplanes.  They even have little flight simulations.  I don’t think we’ve even been everywhere in there yet.  I intend to make the most of it, especially in the winter when we can’t go outside as much.

Anyway, it was quite the adventure.  I survived the return trip, as it was mostly downhill and I found a shorter way home (although the one hill almost did me in).  It was much hotter on the way home and Penny was ready for a nap, as evidenced by how she looked when we got home:

She never even falls asleep in the car, so I really wore her out.

One other thing we’ve done this summer is the Summer Reading Program at the library.  One of the things we had to do was read a book and have Ben draw a picture of it.  The book we read was Moon Plane and this is the picture he drew (I labeled it on the computer, if you click and enlarge it, you may be able to see it):

I know I’m his mother, but I think it’s pretty impressive and adorable.  He was so cute when he was drawing it because he narrated the whole thing.  When we finished all of the items on his reading list, he got a certificate and a bookmark and a new book and some stickers and a pencil and eraser and a tattoo.  He was super pumped.  We’re working on it for Penny too.  It is such a cool program.

That’s pretty much all for now.  We are keeping busy and having fun, even if it is ridiculously hot and humid out most days.  The truth is, riding your bike everywhere isn’t so bad, as long as you can get used to being sweaty all the time.

Zoo Trip

So we went to the zoo on Friday.  It is about an hour away in the quad cities in Illinois.  My visiting teacher invited us with her and even let us use the free passes that came with her season pass.  Hooray for cool new friends.  She has two kids that are almost the exact same ages as mine.  Seriously, Ben and Charlotte are 3 days apart and Penny and Eleanor are a couple weeks apart.

The weather was great and the Zoo was awesome.  It was just the right size.  Not so big you could never see all of it, but just big enough to have all of the best animals.  Ben kept wanting to see the dinosaurs.  I tried to tell him there are no dinosaurs at zoos.  Luckily, they did have some dinosaur sculptures and skeletons.  He and his new friend Charlotte took advantage.

This picture is cute, but the lighting is all funny.

We also saw a pond that had ducks and geese and fish.  Both kids got a kick out of this.  Although Penny was still in the backpack carrier when we were near the water.  She loves water and is just a bit too fearless.

We moved onto the petting zoo, and I set Penny loose.  She got a major kick out of the chickens.

In this picture, she was a little bit bugged that I kept trying to pull her attention away from the chickens.  Both kids loved the goats and each tried to feed them.  Ben was funny because he would drop the food and shriek and laugh as soon as the goat touched his hand.

They had this cool little enclosure where you could walk in with all the birds.  Ben was excited, but also a bit freaked.  I got him to stand by the birds but he kept thinking they were going to land on him.  You can tell in the picture.

I love that picture.  We saw lions and giraffes and ate some lunch and played on the playground.  It’s hard to tell in these pictures, but both kids liked climbing on the killer whale statue.

The little boy with Penny was following her around and helping her climb stuff.  He even caught her when she went down the slide.  It was pretty cute, but I have no idea who the kid was.

And last, we went on a train ride.  Both kids loved this and waved and said hi to all the animals as we passed them.  Penny says “choo choo” now, and it was pretty adorable.

And last, one quick family photo before we left for the day.

Phew

OK, so a lot has happened since my last post, which is bad since I am already woefully behind on posting.  Namely, I STILL haven’t posted about Christmas, or Penny’s birthday.  So, to throw a bone before moving onto more recent things, here are some pictures of Penny’s birthday.  It was pretty low key, we had a family from our ward over and ate dinner and had some personal sized cheesecakes (made in cupcake tins) and opened some presents.  Penny was pleased as punch.

		Penny’s Birthday VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

I’m in the process of putting together a “best of” photo album of the last several months for everyone to see.  The videos are still a long way off.  It just takes so long to sort through them and edit them and post them.

Still, prepare for a synopsis of the last couple of months.  I can’t promise that it will be brief, there is a lot to cover.  Firstly, Ben turned three.  Sadly, we didn’t do anything too big.  We were halfway packed and the house was a mess, and Ben was so excited about presents and cake, it didn’t seem necessary to have a big party.  We had a friend over for dinner and had cake and opened presents.  Apparently I didn’t even take any pictures.  Yipes.  I did take some videos, so I’ll get to it.  Just let it be noted that Ben is now three. 

He is so fun and sweet.  He is much better with Penny and tries so hard to be patient with her.  Conversely, she tries very hard to test his patience.  She is constantly taking his toys, biting him, pinching him, pulling his hair, and generally being very difficult.  He knows all of his letters and the numbers 1-10.  He can count with varied success.  Sometimes he’ll just count to ten perfectly, but other times he is all over the place.  I don’t think he totally gets the concept that the numbers are always supposed to go in the same sequence when you count.  He likes to sing songs and dance.  The best thing is how fun his little imagination is these days.  He can entertain himself really well.  Yesterday, he was playing with his friend “bike” and they were fighting monsters.  Admittedly, most of his imaginary games involve monsters.

He chatters pretty much all day long.  The other day, he was just finishing lunch and I was cleaning up the kitchen.  He was just talking.  It was so funny, I had to write it down on an envelope.  It’s probably not as funny if you aren’t hearing him say it in his “big boy” deep voice.  Anyway, this was the gist, as I wrote it down: “Fire trucks shoot the monsters, not sharks.  Sharks live in the ocean, not in houses.  Houses are great things.  Sharks are in the ocean, they eat fish.  Fish are my favorite food.  I eat it all the time”.  It should be noted that Ben does not eat fish.  It turns out he has a loose definition of the word “favorite”. 

Anyway, onto the next event.  Jon graduated from Medical School.  Yay!  It was very exciting.  I only have the one picture of my family because most of those were on my mom’s camera.  My mom also got great pictures at the graduation.  The kids had a great time with grandparents and aunts and uncles.  As you can see, they got tossed around quite a bit, and loved it.

		Jon’s Graduation VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

It was a momentous occasion, and I am so proud of Jon for making it.  He is now officially Dr. R. Jonathan Willes, or R. Jonathan Willes, MD.  It’s pretty cool.

The next big event was my family reunion in St. George.  My little big brother was running the Ironman Triathlon there.  For those of you uninitiated, the Ironman is a 2.4 mile swim followed by a 112 mile bike ride topped off with a marathon, which is 26.2 miles.  It is insane.  I got worn out just from going around to all the spots to watch him all day.  It was an amazing feat, and I was very impressed with him, even if I do think he is insane.  He did pretty well.  He finished in about 14.5 hours, which is pretty good for a first-timer.  Especially in St. George.  It’s a very difficult course with the altitude and crazy hills on the bike.  Plus, the bike was into the wind a lot and it was really hot.

Here is Brad with the family at the end of the ordeal.  I was actually impressed with how together he was at the end.  He wasn’t falling apart like some people were.  I was ready to have to scrape him off the pavement.  As you can see, we were all wearing matching shirts for Brad to spot us.  My sister designed and ordered them.  They were awesome.

We couldn’t get them in the right sizes for all the grandkids, so my mom just ordered some blank pink shirts to match and I ironed on the logo.  They turned out pretty well.  The sizes weren’t small enough for Penny, so I cut it up and made a little dress.  I was pretty pleased with myself.  Here is the only real picture I got of it before Penny knocked the camera out of my hands and broke it (RIP).  I may be able to get it fixed, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.  Of course, the protection plan I had on it had expired about 2 months before this happened.

After the reunion, I went back up to Salt Lake for a couple of days.  My mom, my sister and I took the kids to Kangaroo Zoo.  It was a blast.  Mostly the day was a success because we got this picture:

I mean, seriously, those boys are so stinking adorable.  Ben had such a good time with his cousins.

As a result of the Pennyfied camera, I have very few pictures after the Ironman.  I didn’t take any pictures of our empty house or the moving truck (although that was such a fiasco I’m not sure I want pictures of it), or the new house.  However, on Friday, I finally found my old camera from college and the battery and the charger.  It was miraculous.  As a result, I got to take some pictures of our latest adventure, which was a trip to the zoo in the quad cities in Illinois.  I think I’ll do a separate post about it. 

So there you go.  I’ll keep working on the videos.  Also, stay tuned for a video tour of our new home and the story of our move.  Also, look for some cute pictures of the kids in our new favorite mode of transport, the bike trailer (thanks grandma).