Bald Eagles

On the way to the post office today, Alice and I saw a group of people pulled off the side of the road near the Iowa River. They were taking pictures of what I thought was the river. I slowed down to see what they were looking at but didn't see anything but didn't see anything in or near the water. At the post office in the little town near us called Hills, the big talk was of the bald eagles in the area. I asked where they had been seen, and it turned out to be the same spot where the people had gathered, which I had passed without seeing a thing, having been looking down not up. We went back the same way and I don't know how I missed it! There were at least 50 bald eagles sitting in three different trees near the river. Every once in awhile one would swoop down over the river, but mainly they just sat there. The longer we stayed, the more people gathered. Some heavy duty cameras arrived--I'm assuming some were from newspapers in the area. Man, it was quite a site to see! Sorry, I didn't have my camera with me. Bruce and I are going to head over there tomorrow morning to see if they're still there.

Christmas x 3

The weekend before Christmas we headed to Florida, where my family had Christmas a week early just for us. Grandma Fearing and Grandma and Grandpa Smith were there, as well as all four of my brothers. Alice was on the clingy side--we were there for such a short time and we went to three different houses to visit and saw so many unfamiliar people that she was a little overwhelmed. Maybe next time will be a little better.

Alice got quite a load--two beautiful dresses, lots of fun books, wooden blocks, and mini-Florida Gator basketball. She also got a very special present from her whole extended family. She got a video of various members of the family reading Disney stories to her and along with it the book they read from and a Minnie Mouse doll. What a wonderful idea!

Our next Christmas was the Friday before the 25th, when we had a special dinner (Bruchetta, Spaghetti Squash with Mediterranian Chicken, and Pumpkin Pie) and opened up the presents we got for ourselves and Alice.

We also filled each other's stockings. Alice got Curious George fruit snacks, a can of rootbeer, and juice boxes (which she wasn't quite ready for--she kept on squeezing them!) in her stocking.

She also got a dog that wags its tail and barks when you pull it and a popcorn popper. When she unwrapped the popcorn popper and we told her what the toy was called, she reached down and started sucking on the plastic, thinking the little balls inside were popcorn and that she could somehow eat them!



Bruce got an MP3 player with an FM transmitter so he can listen to music and books on his commute to work and I got a sewing machine.

Our third Christmas was the 'real' Christmas. We drove up to Mark and Karen's in MN and had Christmas with their family. We had some wonderful food and Santa Claus brought us some much needed knives and stuffed our stockings to overflowing. Bruce enjoyed playing games with the kids and spent hours in the basement with David and his lego set. I caught up on my reading (The Da Vinci Code) and enjoyed helping Hannah with her new cake decorating kit.

Overall, it was a wonderful couple of weeks, but we're glad to be home.

Pigs Grazing

I mentioned in a past entry that I'd try to get a shot of pigs grazing. This isn't the greatest picture, but you get the idea.

About two weeks ago...

...we went to visit the Amana Colonies, an old German settlement about 40 minutes north of us. They emigrated to America because of religious persecution and lived comunally until the 1930s. Later, a group formed the Amana appliances corporation. Basically, it's a bunch of little villages that form a loop, as you can see on the billboard, with cute little stores where you can buy furniture, candles, etc. There are also a few family style restaurants that serve German-American cuisine. Since they were a bit pricey, we decided to come back when we didn't have Alice and could enjoy the food! We mainly went to see the Christmas tree display, but did visit the quilting store.



Here's Alice in front of the beautiful nativity.


Alice wasn't very enthusiastic about Santa. The place wasn't very crowded so we hung out for awhile, holding her while she checked out Santa, but even then she didn't even want to sit next to him, as you can see.


However, she did appreciate the candy cane Santa gave her, which kept her busy for about half an hour.

Gingersnaps

Alice and I baked cookies today from dough I made a couple of days ago. I rolled the dough into balls and it was Alice's job to drop the balls into the sugar, roll them around and then put them onto the baking sheet. She got the dropping part, but misunderstood the last two steps. She thought I said pick up the dough out of the sugar and take a big bite out of it!

Pre-Haircut Pics

We decorated the Christmas tree Monday night. Alice helped by sticking the ornaments in her mouth to check for dust.


This is Alice's new snowsuit, curtesy of her Aunt Polly.


Alice got a new toothbrush when she went with us to the dentist last week. She absolutely loves it. She would walk around brushing her teeth all day if I let her. She also occasionaly spits on the ground (because she sees us spitting into the sink), which was cute the first time but is getting a little old.

Our dentist is great--she's located in Riverside, a small town about five minutes away from us. The waiting room has a little fridge with free beverages and we got free Bath & Bodyworks lotions for being new patients. And the kicker is that the staff babysat Alice while we got our teeth cleaned. What great service!

Haircut

When Alice was taking a bath today I had this sudden urge to cut her hair. I've been wanting to do something with that wild mane of hers for awhile and decided to just go for it while her hair was wet and she was occupied with toys. I didn't touch her bangs because we want them to grow out (it was sure tempting though) but cut about an inch off the back just to even things out a little. I thought it turned out pretty good, though I realized halfway through that I should have waited until we went home to Florida next week. The family tradition has been for Grandma Fearing to give everyone their first haircut while they sit outside on her green step ladder.

15 Month Checkup

Alice had her 15 month checkup on Monday at the University of Iowa's Hospitals and Clinics. We saw Dr. Alaa Shaikhkhalil (try to pronounce that one!), a first year resident who came to the U.S. five and a half months ago from Jordan. The reason I bring that up is when she asked me where we had moved from and I said Alabama, she mentioned that she hadn't yet visited Alabama but had been to South Alabama for an interview. I had a hard time not laughing but guessed she meant South Carolina? It must be hard being so far away from home in a demanding field like medicine. Because she's a first year, her supervisor came in and we met with her as well, which was nice. We've been noticing that Alice's hemangiomas have been losing their redness, and we're starting to see little patches of white. The supervising doctor noticed the white spots as well and told me it was a sign of them starting the process of involuting. She's now in the 80s percentile wise for height and weight.

I wish I had gotten a picture--they gave Alice a little baby bathrobe to wear while waiting for the doctor to come in, which I thought was nice because we usually have to wrap her in a blanket so she won't freeze to death in only her diaper. Alice insisted that I put her shoes and socks back on while we waited and then she started playing in this large cubbyhole that was built into the sink area to hold toys. She was standing up in the cubbyhole with her head resting on the ground, looking through her legs as the doctor walked in. She's a funny little girl. She's quite the walker now and rarely crawls. Right now we're trying to wein her off the binkie during the day time so she has been VERY cranky. She'd rather be in her crib (where she's allowed to have her binkie) than playing without it.

Thanksgiving

This was our first time hosting Thanksgiving dinner and we had a lot of fun! Bruce's brother Mark and his family came down from Minnesota and stayed for a few days. We also invited our landlord Tom and his sister Teresa but they ended up having family come into town so had to decline. Thursday morning, Bruce and Mark helped in the kitchen while Karen kept the kids entertained and out of the kitchen. We had turkey, homemade cranberry sauce, oyster stuffing, regular stuffing, yam and apple casserole, squash casserole, mashed potatoes and gravy, broccoli with cheese sauce, and yeast rolls. For appetizers we had a veggie platter with ranch and bacon dip and a homemade cheese ball with crackers.

Having never cooked a turkey before, I read up on the different ways to keep a turkey moist and decided to brine the turkey beforehand (soak it in a pot of water with kosher salt and brown sugar for 24 hours) and then stuff the cavity with lemon and orange slices. It turned out super moist and delicious!



For dessert we had raspberry chiffon pie with chocolate walnut crust, blueberry pie, chocolate pie, pumpkin pie, and Shaker lemon pie. All the pies got votes for being the "best" pie except the Shaker lemon pie, which we decided the Shakers could keep. As you can see from the picture below, the whole lemon is used, rind and all. The recipe has you soak the slices in sugar overnight, which I expected to soften and sweeten the rind and be really yummy but in actuality the rind toughened up. But if you picked out the rinds it was a pretty good pie.


Afterwards, I was rewarded with a foot massage and nap and when I woke up, the kitchen was miraculously clean. What a wonderful treat that was.

The kids enjoyed playing hide and go seek in the orhards, setting off rockets, reading, and playing card games. For centerpieces I threw together a couple of baskets filled with apples and pine cones that I found outside. To make them more festive, I smeared them with glitter glue. Little Harriett (age 4) wanted to know how the apples got sparkles and someone told her that they came that way on a sparkly apple tree. Well, that afternoon she went out into the orchards looking for the apple tree with sparkles on it! Needless to say, she did not find her magic tree but I did pull down the glitter glue for her to make her own sparkly objects with. What a cutie!

Big Al's Red Hot Hog Racer

Not quite what you think of when you imagine a pinewood derby car, but hey, we are in Iowa, the hog capitol of the world. Bruce came up with the idea and we really had fun making it. At the Elder's Quorum "Manrichment," we came in 16th out of 30 cars and won a prize for creativity. The rules were that the guys were supposed to design the car and the women had complete control over the decoration of the car. There were a lot of pink cars and a lot of interesting cars. One car had a pink feather boa on it, one was decorated as Tinker Bell and another as a mouse. The top three best times raced each other for the title--they were decorated as Herbie, a bone, and a duck. Very cute and very fun. The duck won. Quack, quack!

Smashing Pumpkin

Roll, roll, roll, roll.....

Free fall...

Splat.

Squash Hill

Alice loves being outside so whenever it's nice outside (not very often anymore!) we go out and let her play. Her favorite places are the flower beds in the front yard where there are rocks galore to throw around and this hill which is in the back near the fields. It's actually just a pile of wood chips. We're assuming it's been there a long time because there is squash vine growing out of the pile. Alice likes to climb up the "mountain" and then roll the squash down (with dad acting as the fetcher of the squash).


As you can see, Alice has crazy bangs right now, which really bother me. I just don't see how anyone could stand living with hair in their eyes 24/7 but apparently Alice enjoys it because she rips out any and all hair clips, rubber bands, etc. I try to put in her hair.


Here is an action shot of Bruce throwing the squash up to Alice. We tried cooking one when we first got here but there just wasn't enough meat on it to make it worth the effort. It was tasty though, what little there was.

Tidbits

Well, Bruce's pink eye "vacation" is over. He was just saying he doesn't know if he remembers how to get to work, it's been so long.

On Friday we had some pretty weird weather. I took Alice to a friend's birthday party and on our way home it started hailing, then raining, and then snowing, all in one trip. On the highway I counted four cars in the ditch from the black ice on the road.

Today I had Alice in church all by myself because Bruce was visiting a branch for his new Stake Young Men's Presidency calling. Alice was in a throwing mood and hurled a pen across the room during Sunday school (thankfully no babies were severely wounded) and during RS, when I was sitting in the front of the room with the rest of the Presidency, she grabbed the tupperware of cheese crackers out of my hands and threw it--they went everywhere!

We went to a fireside tonight and Alice was playing near the front of the room next to the portable chalkboard. She saw a bolt sticking up from one of the chalkboard legs and I guess thought it looked like the nipple on a bottle because she started sucking on it and going "Mmmmmm" really loud. The whole left side of the room was cracking up over that one.

Pink I

We've had a fun past few days dealing with runny noses, crusty eyes, and general irratability. Thankfully, it was only Bruce and I that were feeling this way--thanks to persistant handwashing, Alice has gotten of scott free so far.

I started it off with a cold last Wednesday, followed by waking up with pink eye Friday morning. Bruce realized he also had pink eye later that day and it slammed us hard all weekend. Sunday morning I woke up not only with the usual eyes glued shut but when I finally did get them cleaned out I could hardly open my good eye because it was so swollen, which made for a blurry day. Monday we were both feeling better but decided to go to the doctor anyway. Bruce went into work and then went to the student health center where he has to go. The doctor told him he couldn't see patients for at least five days. He thought at first that they would have him stay in his office doing research or something but since he has an officemate they told him not to come back to work until next Monday.

I got really excited at first because we were both feeling a lot better and I had all these plans for little trips we would take later in the week, but then the next day the pink eye flaired up again and the cold-like symptoms came back. So pretty much we've been relaxing at home, watching the first season of Survivor that we got from Netflix (we thought this would be the perfect time to use our free two week trial offer) and taking Alice outside a lot to play in the grass. Below is a picture of Bruce and Alice looking out the window at the birds. She's really beginning to notice things more. Last week we were walking around the farm and she spotted some cows across the creek and through some trees and started mooing before I even noticed them.

Oh and another downer is the weather is beautiful! I just wish we could take advantage of it instead of staying inside feeling crudy. We are trying to get outside and go on walks around the orchards, especially Bruce who is enjoying having some free time despite being sick.

Alice is still practicing her walking and is able to take 5-6 steps now without falling. I think it's finally dawning on her that walking is more than a novelty to get attention because I see her practicing it more on her own. Bruce downloaded some different animal sounds off of the Internet (cow, dog, cat, pig, etc.) and has them on the desktop to entertain Alice with. She gets SO excited when he plays them and will repeat the sounds she hears.

What a Babe!

My brother John (the graphic designer in-training) just made this. What a cute idea!

Trunk or Treat

We gave Alice a cherry lollipop again this year and again, she could barely keep here eyes open to eat it. I'm not sure if she was just pooped out to begin with or if sugar just makes her tired.


We used our same backdrop as last year to decorate the car, but hardly anyone else had decorated so we kind of looked like over-acheivers. I'm not sure why no one decorated--I'm guessing because they hadn't made it a competition. Alice is holding onto the award she got for being the "Cutest Pig." There weren't any other pigs there but she was still very proud of her award.


Before the actual Trunk or Treat there were games in the cultural hall along with this back drop to take family pictures with. Alice wasn't very cooperative in the smiling department though.

Breakfast of Champions & Halloween Decorations

The morning after the party, I noticed Alice was being awfully quiet sitting on the floor with her toys (which usually means trouble) so I went over to check on her. She had found a stray piece of candy and had opened it and eaten about half of it. If she could talk she would have said, "This is the best breakfast I've ever had!"


I put up Alice's Halloween pictures from last year and it was fun to see how much she'd grown!


We made our same scarecrow guy from last year for our front porch and then I decided to make a baby scarecrow too with the overalls I'd just bought for Alice.

Halloween Party

Friday night we had a Halloween party with some of the families we have gotten to know. We'd invited quite a few families, both with and without children, but we ended up having four families there, all with children, which actually turned out to be the perfect amount.


I spent most of the week planning, cleaning, cooking, and decorating. With Alice, what would take me one hour to do on my own takes five. Even when she doesn't need my attention, she's going around undoing everything I clean up! It's hard to see here but I had foam bats hanging from the ceiling--the kids loved them. I also used a bunch of fake spider webs and plastic spiders, though I could have just let our spiders run rampant for a couple of weeks and had the same effect.

What took a big chunk of time was finding music we liked. I couldn't find any good Halloween CDs that weren't too scary and had songs that were sung by the original artists, not some no name group that got together to make a CD. We ended up coming up with our own song list and purchasing the songs online. Here are the songs we chose:

1. Monster Mash
2. The Munsters
3. Harry Potter 1 "Hedwigs Theme"
4. Beetlejuice: Main Theme
5. The Addams Family
6. Love Potion #9
7. Thriller
8. Funeral March of a Marionette (Alfred Hitchcock Theme)
9. Spooky
10. Tales from the Crypt
11. Edward Scissorhands: Main Title
12. The Purple People Eater
13. Halloween
14. Rock Lobster

We mostly just talked and ate and let the kids play with toys but we did play one game that was pretty fun. I would set 5 different bars in front of a child and the parents had to guess which one the child would go for first. If they got it right, they won the candy bar. Some kids were very timid about touching them and others crawled towards them like they knew exactly what was inside those shiny wrappers. What surprised me the most was that so many of the parents picked the right candy bar. Some decision making factors were which had the shiniest wrapper and where the bar was placed (middle, far left, far right) and also the familiarity factor--which candy bar they always see their dad eating at home.

Driver's License

Last week I went to get my Iowa Driver's License. They were surprisingly effecient--much better than my experience in Florida where I waited for 2 hours and then the computers broke down literally as I was walking up for my turn at the counter. It took all of 15 minutes, which was nice since I had Alice with me and miracle of miracles, my picture actually looks good!

An interesting thing happened during the eye exam that I'm still trying to figure out. As most of you know, my retina detached a couple of years ago and I had to have surgery to reattach the retina. Because it's impossible to reattach it perfectly, my vision was permanently damaged. The surgery also caused cateracts to form. However, my good eye almost completely makes up for the poor vision in my bad eye and I see almost as well as before the detachment (when both eyes are open, of course). When I looked into the eye exam machine, the clerk asked me to read the top line of numbers. Below is what I saw. I was easily able to read the numbers off to him.

The clerk then asked me read the numbers on the lefthand side of the screen that I had skipped over. I had no idea what he was talking about--to me, there were no other numbers on that row. Below is what I should have seen, but didn't.

What I'm confused about is why I didn't see anything. If the machine does isolate my left eye, like I'm assuming it does, I should have seen very blurry numbers. At first, I was worried that my retina had detached again without my noticing it, but if that was the case, it would have been complete blackness--I wouldn't have seen the white background.

Because I wasn't able to read the numbers, he gave me the flashing light test, where lights flash on either side of my head while I'm looking into the machine and I have to see the lights in my peripheral vision and tell him when they flash. I passed that test so I was able to get a driver's license, I just have a special restriction that requires me to only drive in vehicles that have side view mirrors, which is virtually all vehicles. I was disappointed to find out that my dad took the side view mirrors off his hot rod because they were getting banged up, but being the nice dad that he is, he told me that he'd put them back on if I wanted to drive the car.

Bruce's Critique

Bruce told me today that he was disappointed that the last entry didn't have any pictures. Of course, I had to remind him that he's supposed to be writing the blogs along with me, not reading them! He also mentioned that my comment in the last entry about him giving me back massages seemed to him more like a gimmick to get him to rub my back more, rather than the sincere, heartfelt, thankfulness that it was. How suspicious he is! Ok, so it might have been a little hint...

Alice has been getting into EVERYTHING lately. I think since we've been staying indoors a lot (because it's so cold!) she's getting bored and is exploring a lot more. She also took her first steps tonite! She took the first couple on accident and then we got so excited about it she kept on wanting to do it.




The other night Alice said amen for the first time. Actually, it was more like "em-em" but we counted it. Below is a picture of her right after she said it. She's so proud of herself!


Ok, I've been trying to hold off until Halloween to post pictures of Alice in her costume, but we tried it on the other day and she was just so cute I couldn't resist! Now we just have to work on saying "oink oink."