Pool shots

We hung out at Matt & Kevin's pool this afternoon. Mom pretended that she was good at taking pictures.

Ice Cream

These are two completely un-retouched and unstaged photos of a 2.5 year old child who is almost done eating an ice cream cone. Yum.

Summer fun

Here I am petting Ella's kitty "Finnbar". He got scared of me. I don't know why. All I did was chase him and try to hug him. Then he got mad and pushed me away with his paws and scratched my face. Mom said the kitty can't talk and he was trying to tell me that he didn't want to play just then, but he didn't mean to hurt me. My owies felt better after mom gave me a popsicle. Ella and I have our own backyard pool.

I am a gardener in training.

Grandpa's Day (aka Father's Day)

Hi, it's me Alex. We celebrated a belated Father's Day with Grandpa. We went for dinner and Grandpa had all kinds of specialty beers. I ate pizza!

Final Iowa Pix

Mom here. Lots of fun photos from our trip. Juna rode in the trailer below and pretended she didn't just turn "40". We had friends over for dinner. Reid and Alex are the same age and have been friends since they were 3 months old.

Alex loved playing the drums in the barn.

Uncle Jack was her favorite playmate.

Alex got to kiss her duckling good night.

Playing with the toes was a crowd pleaser.

The house was built by my great, great grandfather between 1902 - 1905.

Looking down on the Upper Iowa River from a park in Decorah. See, not so flat here. Had to get some swinging time in.

More riding in the Cub Cadet and looking at everything. Note the pajamas...country living has its advantages.

We had a lot of fun with family and friends in Iowa. Alex got to hold a frog, duckling, chicks, and multiple cats. She picked strawberries, helped granny in the yard, rode the golf cart, rode the Cub Cadet, saw a baby owl, played a lot, ate tons of junk food thanks to granny, and had a blast.

Iowa - the movie

Baby Animals

More fun in Iowa

Mom here. I forgot how many huge trees there are out here, they provide a canopy over the house, barn, grainery, and other buildings. It's beautiful and mom has spent a lot of time/energy making flower beds as well. Here is Juna on her birthday. Today is Juna's birthday so we gave her presents and celebrated.

The view of the pond from the yard. Later on today we might go out on the paddle boat.

Alex is having fun riding with Granny on the Cub Cadet, golf cart and other 4-wheelers as we do "chores". There were a lot of branches down from storms over the last 2 days.

Granny has 6 times more toys in her barn than we own at home...including this drum set.

This morning Alex had fun on the patio watering the flowers. The hot tub hasn't worked since Wed night's violent thunderstorm, so mom's pool contact is coming out to fix it.

We relaxed out back this am and had breakfast on the patio.

Trip to Visit Granny in Iowa

Mommie took me to Northeast Iowa for vacation. We went to visit Dewey who has a dairy farm. These are 4 week old baby calves. Then we got to bottle feed them. They're hungry!

Me and granny hold the bottle steady so the baby calf can drink.

Then I got to drive!

We went to the Decorah Hatchery to pick out my baby chicks and ducks.

We got 5 chicks and 3 ducklings. We named the ducklings: Linny, Ming Ming and Tuck.

The babies chirped the whole way home. I got to put them in their new home in Granny's barn. I was extra gentle.

This is granny's barn where the ducks, chicks and all "my" toys stay. The barn was built in 1900 by my great great great grandfather. Granny had it restored and it is part of the Iowa historical register or something like that.