Land of the Buckeyes

Alan's sister and her family recently moved from Alaska to Iowa and it happened to correlate with Alan's week between semesters so we made the trek to central Iowa. Mapquest said it would take us 6 hours and 6 minutes, it would be nice if they had a button to click to calculate the difference when you have a baby in the car...But we finally arrived and Peter was more than happy to be out of his car seat.
One of the days we went to a state park and enjoyed the trees and stream. It was a lot of fun. Peter loves spending time with his Grandpa Jensen, they are good buddies. Everyone was either throwing or trying to skip rocks in this little stream and Peter of course wanted to jump in, so I took his socks off and let him dip his toes in. He didn't quite know what to make of the sand and cold water. But after a few minutes he was ready to take off downstream!

Here are some candid shots of the cousins taken by Alan.

Another day we went to a little Dutch town nearby that was having a Tulip Festival. I have never seen such tall tulips before. They were beautiful.

And of course Peter needed to destroy at least one...

It was nice to spend some time together with Alan, Peter especially indulged in some daddy bonding time.

Peter has been working on feeding himself, as you can see he still needs a little work!

Grandma and Grandpa Jensen and the grandbabies.

On the way home we decided to break up the drive and stop in Carthage. I haven't been there since I was a kid and boy has the place been updated. The grounds are beautiful. One thing was still the same though and that is the Spirit that resides there. Even as a child I remember feeling it.