Megan's Graduation

My little sister graduated from high school...let me say that again...my LITTLE sister graduated from high school. The sister that we took on walks in the stroller after church. The sister that I watched take her first steps. The sister that I watched grow into a beautiful, mature lady. I couldn't be more proud of her!

Senior Night

Grandpa Jeff rented a bouncy castle and Elliott and Addison had the best time of their life

"Hey guys, did you see that Microsoft went up 2 points?"

The cousins

25 Months

I feel like I just wrote Elliott's 2 year post and now I'm already doing 25 months. I think we have finally hit this thing called "Terrible Two's." I'm not sure if you've heard of it, but apparently toddlers go through a difficult phase around their 2 year birthday. Yup, we are there! Elliott is testing our limits daily hourly and hates when I leave his sight. It's difficult but Mark and I are slowly learning how to stand our ground. We love him to no end and know that he's just going through an important developmental stage. 

Elliott is really starting to carry on conversations with us, although we only understand about 20% of what he says. Below are some of our favorite conversations the last couple of weeks:

Elliott - Track broke, track broke. 

Mom - Ok, Mommy will fix it.

Elliott - Der we go.

Dad - Elliott, do you want some cereal?

Elliott - Kix, like Mommy (I was eating Kix)

Elliott - And berries (I had raspberries in my cereal)

Elliott - No...poopies (pointing to his cereal)

Mom - What? You have poopies in your cereal?

Elliott - No...poopies 

Dad - Do you have poopies in your diaper?

Elliott - No...BOO-bees (pointing to his cereal again)

Mom - Oh, you want blue berries? 

Elliott - Yeah (giggling hysterically) 

Elliott - Snack, Mommy?

Mom - Sure, what do you want?

Elliott - Fruit snacks.

Mom - Um, how about an orange?

Elliott - Um, how bout.... fruit snacks? 

Reading books in his new playroom 

Taking a break from unpacking 

New haircut 

Talking to "Baby Kat" 

It's Good To Be Home

After a whirlwind of 2 months of planning, we closed on our new house on April 25th and moved in the next day. Thanks to a lot of help from family and friends we packed up our entire house on Saturday morning, drove 200 miles, and unpacked the entire UHaul Saturday night. Whew! You should have seen the UHaul. Mark had all 26 feet of it packed from floor to ceiling and front to back like a puzzle. We are now busy painting and decorating and making it our home. 

Helping Mom unpack...kind of

Fun at the new park just a few blocks from the house

This was a picture of the only stuff we couldn't fit in the UHaul. Yes, we had the UHaul packed that full.

Elliott's 2nd Birthday

Elliott is 2! It sounds so weird to say that we have a 2 year old, although he's looked like a 2 year old for about 6 months now. Thank you "tall" genes. Elliott understands and repeats so much. We have found ourselves already playing the spelling game so he doesn't know what we are talking about. He is addicted to the choo-choos he got for his birthday and has to take them into the shower and into bed with him. He is starting to test Mom and Dad to see what our limits are and I'm afraid to say that he wins occasionally just because we don't have any fight left in us by the end of the day. Yes, sometimes our son goes to bed without brushing his teeth and eats animal crackers for breakfast. But we love him to no end! He is so full of life and can cheer up any bad day at work when he greets us with a huge smile and hug when he we pick him  up. 

We celebrated his birthday this last weekend and it was a great success! We had a lot of family and friends over and Elliott had a blast playing with everyone. It was one of our last weekends in Kansas City before our move back to Iowa which it made it that much more special!

Elliott was 36 inches and 31.6 lbs at his 2-year checkup.

Who knew that balloons could keep them entertained for so long

Awe...so cute 

Ok, get away from me now 

So many fun new toys 

Deciding which balloon he's going to dig into first 

Yup, that's the best we could get 

Cousin Love!

Easter Egg Hunt

Elliott got to participate in his first Easter Egg Hunt this year at our church. I think he was more excited about the fire truck than the actual hunt.

There's No Place Like Home

After a whirlwind of a couple of months, Mark and I will be official residents of the state of Iowa again on April 25^th! We both started exploring career opportunities just to in my words “make some contacts and see what was out there.” To our surprise we received some pretty promising leads early on and realized that we could quickly turn our goal/dreams into reality. We decided to put our house on the market on March 2^nd for sale by owner and sold it exactly 36 hours later after a bidding war. We had a much deserved “Oh Crap” moment when we realized we just sold our house and we had no jobs and nowhere to move to. We quickly accelerated our discussions with our prospective employers and we both received written offer letters 2 days apart. Wow, the Lord works in mysterious ways! We found a house a few days later in Ankeny and get to call it home on April 25th. After putting in my resignation at Commerce Bank, they decided they wanted to try and make something work for me to stay on with them and work from Des Moines. I am super excited to represent Commerce in the state of Iowa. Mark will go to work as a bridge engineer for CH2M Hill. 

We will miss our friends in Kansas City but could not be more excited and anxious to get back to the Cyclone state!!

Elliott's First Why Conversation

Sitting in the chair this morning while Elliott wakes up...

Elliott: Daddy?
Mom: Daddy's at work this morning.
Elliott: Why?
Mom: He had to go in early.
Elliott: Why?
Mom: He has to make money for us.
Elliott: Why?
Mom: So we can eat and you can go to college.
Elliott: Why?
Mom: So you can grow strong and get an education.
Elliott: Why?
Mom: So you can get a good job and move out of the house.
Silence....