Muscatine, Iowa

At the start of September we headed to Muscatine in East Iowa to spend a week with Jake's Step-Mom, Heidi. She lives on the edge of town with about 4 acres. She has stables with a couple of horses plus lots of other fun animals; a pot belly pig, goats, dogs, cats, kittens, sheep, peacocks, turkeys and chickens (a regular petty zoo). The kids just loved it, it felt a bit like home in Africa with all the animals and open spaces (and plenty of chores!). Heidi gives riding lessons to local kids so the boys got plenty of time to ride and plus some great advice. It was a little different for them to sit on saddles and not use the horse's knee as a stepping stool to get up on the horse, but it was also nice for them to ride horses with a bit more "get up and go" than they are used to.

I got to ride a lot too! This horse was amazing, you clucked to get him to walk, kissed kissed to get him to trot and told him to blow to canter! Very obedient and absaloutly beautiful. It was a little different for me to ride the "western style,' the horse has to keep his head down the whole time and I had to hold the reigns a little differently, but I had a ton of fun.

This is what happened within the first two hours of getting to Heidi's. We put Jordan on the back of a horse with another little girl and led them around the arena. As they were getting ready to dismount, the horse sidestepped and off they both slid. Jordan whacked her chin on a rock and it just split right open. The other girl landed on her side, but other than being a bit sore, was fine. Thankfully the little girl's mother was a nurse who quickly ran home for supplies, cleaned out the wound, and cauterized it with silver nitrate which pulled it together nicely (saved us a trip to the ER). Jordan was a trooper and put up with it all very well, she's a toughie! She does have a nice scar though!

We had the most awesome day with Jake's Grandparents while there. They took us out to an Amish town called Kalona. It was absolutely beautiful to see all their pristine farms with their laundry flapping on the clotheslines, to see them riding in their horses and buggies down the road. We went to a few of their stores and got lots of goodies including wasabi peas (who would have thought!). I enjoyed seeing their simple way of living and would definelty like to do some reading on their culture as it is pretty fascinating. One of the highlights of the day was going to a cheese shop that had the biggest selection of cheese I have every seen. It also had sausages and and different meats. Best of all it had free samples. I am not joking, we spent half an hour at the counter taste testing (I was in heaven!). We bought plenty that we enjoyed for weeks to come. All in all it was a super fun day. 

Grandma Harrison set up a scavenger hunt for the kids. She then chased them for their "loot" dressed up a pirate (Jude was pretty scared!). 

Heidi came out to Cameroon earlier in the year. She got the stars and the sign made by our welder friend while there. We're going to show him what his finish product looks like.

Grandma Heidi and the kiddos (Jordan in her new cowboy boots)