I have trouble saying "no" to this sometimes...

A quick laugh

I was looking through the pictures from Robin and Bella's adventure on the train (see previous post) when I came upon this picture.

When I first saw the picture it looked like it did above and took me a little longer than it should have to realize that the train was not traveling 100mph and that Bella was not holding on while enjoying every second. The issue was that the picture needed to be rotated which is not nearly as entertaining as how I first saw it.

Reading on the Rails

On a Sunday in January, Bella and I took a train ride as part of the One Book, Two Book celebration. The train was the Hawkeye Express and we took it from the North Liberty library to the U of I Main Library. It was exciting because the train tracks run close to our house and we cross them and drive along them in our every day life, so I was interested to see the city from a different view point. I wasn't even sure where all the train tracks went.

When I read about it, I wondered why it would take 45 minutes to get from one library to another and when we got on the train I knew. It went really really slow. Bella was interested in looking around the train and they also had book characters on the train, so she really enjoyed that. By the time we got to the Main Library, it was already time to take the return trip home, so we basically spent two hours on the train. On the way back, it was getting kind of dark and Bella was getting bored, so she just drew for a while. I had a discussion with someone who was working on the train and knew a lot about it. I told him it seemed like the Hawkeye Express went quite a bit faster. He said "Oh yeah, the Hawkeye Express goes about 40 mph and the regulations for the historic track we are on only allows us to go 10 mph. " Yep... 10 mph. No wonder it seemed slow. It was the first time passengers had been on the track instead of cargo since 1957! The train got back to the North Liberty Rec Center at 6pm and Jeff was playing bball then, so it worked out perfectly for us to meet up with Jeff and Evie when we got back.

Ready to go

Corduroy was on the train!

Where we cross the train tracks every day

Iowa River



Bella sneaks another picture with Corduroy

Drawing on the way back

This is Evie waiting for us at the Rec center, she was actually pretty sick that day

We met up with the Davis boys to watch bball

How ice cream can warm your heart

Big sis helps lil sis eat ice cream

Happy Valentine's Day!

Evelyn's "Strong"

Grandpa Groves came to visit on Sunday and took this picture of Evie and aptly captioned it:

"I am so mad. Grandpa came to visit today and he did not bring us any of that great butternut squash"

Updates

It's been awhile since we have blogged on a consistent basis so here are a few updates. Evie has been using the potty for the past several weeks, she usually has a BM or pees when she sits on it. She is very proud of herself after going and has a potty dance that she does. Evie is not at the point where she can lose the diaper and we do not expect that for quite sometime, but we are very proud of the progress she has made thus far. Evie is mostly interested because she sees Bella sit on the potty and her big sister has been her biggest cheerleader. She will get in her face after she has gone potty and say "Good job, Sweetie" and dances with her afterwards. Evie is also saying a lot more words and is really developing her personality. She is currently refusing to eat foods that are not fruit snacks or treats (at least she is not eating her lunch and dinner particularly well as of late). Evie has also been taking off her coat and shoes by herself when we get home.
Miss Leah from school did this to Evie's hair-so cute!

Bella is growing everyday and learning new skills. She has been doing gymnastics and really is enjoying it. Her writing skills continue to improve as she worked on Valentine's Day cards today. She wrote her name on the cards and started righting them in the proper order. She has been writing them in them in the proper order but not consecutively (i.e. her name has often times looked like Bllae). Bella is a bit of a drama queen as she got frustrated about writing her name. She wrote the "A" before the "L"s and said "I am going up to my room to cry forever." Bella has become interested in the names of streets, but I think she only has one down which is Interstate 80. Anytime we go by it or on it she yells "Interstate 80!"

Sample of Bella's work. (She chose "Hidden Pictures" for her Valentines. She really is loving doing Search and Find books, and probably didn't realize that these are quite a bit harder, but she's still excited about them)

We will do some long overdue posts on our trip to Florida and Disney World in November/December, Bella's BDAY, Christmas, and more.