We had a great visit to Iowa and were so happy to see everyone there. Spencer had a blast with his grandma and grandpa, both of whom he called "Grandpa" and also played lots with his aunts and cousins. It was a relaxing two weeks, minus some car troubles, and I'm so glad we went in the summer. Once again I'm writing this post at night when I'm tired but I wanted to get the pictures up even if I don't feel like writing very much. Thanks everyone for such good times!!

I didn't get pictures of everyone but it seems that I got a lot of Spencer with Evangelina. He had no trouble warming up to her, or anyone else, even though it had been a full year since he'd seen them. Here they are sneaking up on a squirrel, Spencer learning how to tip toe as quietly as possible.

Yummy popsicles.

My mom wanted Spencer to dress up in some pioneer clothes for a picture and the surprising part was that he loved it! We may need to have some more costumes for him to play with at home.

We got to visit Kalona, a small Amish town close to where I used to live about an hour from Davenport. It was fun to visit some of the Amish-owned shops we used to go to and to see the horse drawn carriages.

This "family portrait" didn't turn out quite as well as I had hoped, but the corn sure is beautiful.

And, surprise Amy! I caught this picture after talking with you out on the swing. What cute cousins: Katie, Spencer and Annabelle! (I'll email you the original if you want it.)

Stringing words together

Spencer has been putting more words together just the last week or two with a lot of two word phrases like "no bath" and "Daddy book" (for "Daddy, read me a book") and an occasional full sentence with a subject and verb, as in the video below. I think it helps that he's been hanging out with some older kids at the playground and wanting to copy what they say. It is fun to see how excited he is to express himself better, though some places aren't as good as others. Today in sacrament meeting he was eating some craisins and at a particularly quiet moment he practically shouted in my ear "I drop it!" when some craisins fell out of his hand. We now have the new challenge of teaching him to have an indoor voice, or at least when to be quiet at church.



(I called the pens crayons because that's what he calls everything you write with.)