Hadlee's 1st birthday!

We decided to have Hadlee's birthday party in combination with Suzy's Memorial Day cookout since Jeremy works in the evenings and would never be home on June 1st.  So Suzy decorated with the decorations I had stored in the basement and made her cake while we drove home from St. Joe.

 Hadlee had her first ear of corn for her birthday!

A few days later Hadlee went to the doctor for her 1 yr checkup.  She's slowed down a bunch in her growth now that she's moving.  She was 20+ pounds and in the 40th %ile for both weight and height.  She got a few shots and is perfectly healthy!  She's much more active and brave than her sister was.  She'll climb everything, slides, fireplace hearths, steps, and have no fear.  She's cruising all over, standing up and starting to let go of things but has yet to take her first steps.  She almost did it today though!  Her first word, just like Maddox, was "uh-oh" when she drops something.  She also will repeat "stay" when I tell Jessi to stay.  She also has dark brown hair like her parents (Maddox was blond and is now turning light brown with blond streaks) which I love!  Just in the time that we've been in Iowa it has come in a lot thicker.  Iowa can apparently grow corn AND hair!

More Excursion Photos

This is Jennifer's boxer, Sugar, who was very tolerant of Hadlee crawling all over her and Maddox laying on and riding her.  She's a good girl!

Hadlee's loving the sidecar ride from sis!

We went to the Tulsa Zoo too and this time Maddox wanted to ride the camel all by herself.  I thought she'd chicken out, but she didn't!

After the Des Moines zoo Maddox had an infatuation with penguins.  I got her a little stuffed one there that she promptly named "Dude" after the real one she named that too.  In Tulsa she chose to ride on the penguin on the carousel of course.

That's a big fish.  Or little kids.  Whichever.

Like mother, like daughters, my girls loved petting (and crawling on) the goats and sheep.

Had to take the train ride to make Maddox happy.  She's been pretty interested in train rides too these days.  It was the end of the day though, all naps had been skipped, and Hadlee was done.  Happy, but tired.  She fell asleep before we even left the parking lot.

After we left Tulsa we drove to St. Joe over Memorial Day weekend to meet Jeremy and visit all of his family.  One afternoon we went out to the farm, drove through the pastures, and hiked up to the top of this hill.  Much of the land behind them is the Schultz's farm land along the river in Kansas.  I'm sure most of that is under water by now with the flooding along the Missouri River.  One of those tiny farm houses in the background is Jeremy's grandpa's where he got his running start running between his farmhouse and his grandpa's a few miles away as a little boy.  Even though my girls are hot and tired and probably covered in ticks, I love this picture.  It's a beautiful view of their family history.

Back in Iowa Maddox, Hadlee, Emily, and I spent one afternoon at the "dancing water" just a walk from Suzy's house.  Hadlee was adorable sporting her new swimming suit her Daddy got her for her birthday.  It has a matching coverup.  It's so cute and stylish I wish I could get the same suit in my size!

And then, finally, 6 weeks after leaving North Carolina, we closed on our new house!

Excursions While Homeless

It didn't take long for Emily and Maddox to settle into playing all day every day.  Tough life for them to have to live with your cousin.

 Maddox, Hadlee, and I went to the zoo in Des Moines one day.  It was a gorgeous day for the zoo!  Mid 70s and the animals were very active.  The zoo is on the smaller side but a perfect size for my age kids.

 Turns out goats don't like it when babies pull their ears.  Who knew?

 Maddox was awfully disturbed that she couldn't get any milk to come out of this fake cow's fake udder.

 Maddox rode her first camel.  She was a little nervous but is pretty much willing to do anything with me.

 Suzy (who had a very injured shin/calf/possible stress fracture but wanted to run anyway), Jeremy, and Matthew (who ran the 1 mile race) ran a 5K mud run.  Fun for them, freezing cold for the rest of us.  Here they are clean and weird at the start.

 And here they are dirty and not so energetically weird at the end.  Despite Suzy's injury they both won 1st in their age division and Jeremy won 3rd overall and Suzy 12th among the women.  So much for letting an injury slow you down.

 After a few weeks at Suzy's the girls and I went to Tulsa to stay with my other sister, Jennifer, for a week plus.  We spent one day at the aquarium.  Hadlee loved the turtles.  Right at her level!

 AAAAHH!  About to get attacked by a shark!  Apparently it was more funny than scary.

 Sisters checking out the big tank together.

 What IS this thing on my head mom??  Ha!

We were in Bixby (Tulsa) when the huge tornado hit Joplin.  A little too close for comfort.  The next night when there were tornadoes around us we all 6 and 2 dogs spent 20 minutes in the closet.  Nothing happened too close though, just extra cautious after the terrible Joplin news.

Apparently we were homeless too long or had too much fun being homeless.  I'll have to make a second post.

Cross-country Drive

We left Winston-Salem about 1pm on Easter Sunday and drove ALL day long.  We got to Indianapolis about 11pm.  The trip went VERY well though.  The girls watched tv, took naps, got out for a long dinner or lunch break, watched more tv, took another nap and that was that.  No fuss, no tears.  The only fussing came from me while driving in blinding rain and storms at night.  The most interesting part of the trip was to see where Gabbie would curl up.  And she only got to get out of her cage the second day.

Will it be on top of the back seat?

Or curl up with Jessi?

Or maybe in my lap while I do my best to not drive off the road and keep her out from under my feet?

The best and longest lasting place was curled up under Maddox's feet on the diaper bag.  As long as Maddox didn't kick her!

As close as I could get to getting a picture of Hadlee since she rode behind me.

The second day we only had to drive about 7 hours and got to my sister's house in West Des Moines just in time for dinner, where we proceeded to live for 6 weeks . . .  

Our last NC Easter

There aren't very many Easter pictures this year.  The days leading up to Easter were filled with packing and packing and more packing for our Easter day move to Iowa.  We did manage to squeeze in some time to color eggs.  We just did it earlier than usual and hid them earlier than usual and then made egg salad out of them for the road on Saturday before we left.  It's hard to hide eggs in an empty house anyway.  On Easter morning I hid plastic eggs around our shoes, suitcases, behind doors, and the few random boxes left in the house.

 Hadlee's job during egg coloring was just to look cute and laugh a lot.  She did good!

 We went to church for the last time (with Jeremy's mom who was there to drive one of our cars to Iowa) then came home to load the last stuff up and take our last Easter picture in front of our first home.  Yes, I was sad.  I still am as I write this.  We had a lot of good memories in that house.  It's hard to leave the house where you started your family, hard to leave all the things you loved about the house and it's location and it's neighbors.  Hard to leave the town where Jeremy and I started our married life together and made so many memories for our first 6 1/2 years.  (Have I really only been married 7 years??)

Now on to bigger and better things and many more memories here in Waukee, Iowa!