It's About Time

I'm not even giving excuses for not updating our blog. Suffice it to say we've been pretty busy traveling across the country, trying to plan a move, and buy a house. I lied; I guess I will give a few excuses :)

Without further ado, I'd like to catch ya'll up on a few things. I get to say "ya'll" again, even though I'm not officially a Texan yet.
First off Mike graduated with his MBA in early May.

But, before he did, my parents came out a week prior to graduation to celebrate with us.
Here are some of our adventures with Grandpa and Grandma Black:
Fishing at Lake Monroe. We didn't catch anything, but we all had a good time being outside in beautiful Indiana.


Riding a train in French Lick. Jonah loves trains, and he loved this hour and a half train ride through French Lick, Indiana. French Lick is home to tomato juice and Larry Bird. Who knew?


We loved having my parents here.

A week later, Mike's parents came and he graduated!!

Here he is an all of his graduation regalia


and with the family. Mike's parents came out for graduation, and then treated us to an awesome trip to Nauvoo.

We were all able to go to the temple, go to Carthage jail, and visit downtown old Nauvoo.

We had a wonderful time with Mike's parents and are so glad they came out for his graduation.

We celebrated Mothers' Day in Nauvoo, and Mike surprised me with tickets to see Mary Poppins in Chicago. Anita stayed a couple extra days so we could make the trip up to Chicago without dragging Jonah along for another 8 hour drive in the car. It was a fabulous show with some of the original cast members from broadway.

A few days later, we all hopped on a plane and headed to California to see the rest of the Lowes. We were able to stay two whole weeks and could've stayed all summer. The weather was gorgeous and we spent a lot of time outside.

We went to a Stanford baseball game with all of the older grandkids,

to the beach,


to L.A. to visit Mike's grandparents,


to a Giants baseball game with Joe and Meg Field (we had rockin' seats by the way. What can we say other than: we KNOW people)

and celebrated Charlie Drummond's fourth birthday with a Cowboy-themed birthday party. Here's Jonah in his Cowboy attire. He learned to say "Hee Haw" ... we'll have to work on that one a little more.



After visiting the Lowes, we headed to Utah for another two weeks of family and fun. While we were there we went to the Orem Fest Carnival. Jonah rode lots of rides. He was pretty serious about the whole thing.


The only way we could tell he was having any fun, is that he cried when we had to take him off when the ride was over.
Here's Jonah checking out a helicopter with Dad.

Jonah loves helicopters, planes, any type of truck, buses, trains...basically anything that goes.
We also went to an aquarium. Jonah loved watching the fish. Here is with Uncle Nathan, or "Nah-Nah". Jonah LOVES "Nah-Nah"


We also had family pictures taken by Amanda Peterson while were in Utah. They turned out great. Here's a few:






We're now back in Indiana with tons of free time on our hands. We're enjoying spending time together, especially because we know that we won't see a lot of each other once Mike starts school in August.
We took a trip to the Indianapolis zoo on Wednesday.
Jonah rode on a train,

saw lots of animals,

and even got to ride a horse.


He is the greatest little boy.


He makes me laugh everyday. I can hardly believe he is going to be turning two on the 25th of this month.

We've bought a house in Texas, and will be closing on August 6th. It's a great little house and we feel so blessed that it fits our needs and is in our price range. I'd love to post pictures, but I'm lame and didn't take any when we went to Texas to look at it. You can go to this website though and check out a slide show:
http://www.margiestibora.com/DispListing.asp?ListingID=145336&AdminID=1885&PropertyType=A&BuyerID=

Until next time!

Hullabaloo, Caneck! Caneck!

You may be wondering about the title of our latest post. If you are one of those people that retains meaningless bits of sports trivia (pretty much every male I have ever known), or you happen to live in Texas, you would know that "Hullabaloo, Caneck! Caneck!" happens to be the opening line of Texas A&M's War Hymn.

So what we're really trying to say is: "WE'RE MOVING TO TEXAS!" College Station, Texas that is, and Mike will be starting his Ph.D. at Texas A&M this Fall. I never thought I'd live in Texas. I never thought I'd live in Indiana either. Funny what life brings.

We visited College Station at the end of April hoping to find a house. We found ugly, overpriced houses in good areas of town and really cute, new houses in the bad areas. Luckily, there are new homes coming on the market every few days or so. We made an offer on this house:


Somebody else made an offer earlier on the same day, and we didn't get the house.

This house came on the market this past Monday:

We made an offer that day, without seeing it in person mind you. Two other people made an offer on Monday. We just found out we didn't get the house. The person who did, paid 100K in cash for it. Apparently, the economy's housing woes are not so woeful in Texas. Texas really is like it's own country.

Despite these setbacks, I'm not worried about finding a house. I know that everything will work out. We'll keep you updated on our long distance house hunting.

Happy Easter

Jonah was one lucky little boy when it came to Easter this year. He got to go to FOUR Easter egg hunts. That means more candy. Unsurprisingly, "Candy" has become his new favorite word. Sometimes he'll just start talking about candy while we're driving in the car. It's funny to know what's on his mind.
On Thursday morning we had an Easter egg hunt at our church playgroup.
Here's Jonah and I getting ready to go outside. He sure knows how to cheese it for the camera.

On Thursday afternoon, we went to another Easter egg hunt hosted by the MBA program.
Here's Jonah with all of the other kids before the egg searching mayhem began.

And, here he is in action with Mike.



Whenever he found an egg, he immediately tried to open it to get the candy out. We had a hard time getting him to look for more eggs to put in his basket.
On Saturday, the city held an Easter egg hunt by the courthouse downtown. It was nice because they had different sections for each age group.

Jonah got to meet the Easter bunny. I was a little creeped out, but Jonah wasn't even scared.
Jonah's final Easter egg hunt, was on Easter day. The Easter bunny made Jonah work a little harder to find the eggs, but Jonah did great. He knew there were "nem-a-nems" (aka M&Ms) inside the eggs, so he had some motivation.


The easter bunny came after Jonah's nap, and Mom was mean enough to make him wear his bunny ears AGAIN. Thus, the dazed and confused, I've had too much candy look.

We hope you all had a wonderful Easter as well!

Spring Break

I always look forward to Spring Break. I love spending every waking moment with Mike. That must mean I really like him, huh? The Lowe family Spring Break could never be complete without a little family time. Dirk and Marissa planned the blessing of their sweet baby, Jane Elizabeth Black, the first weekend in March so we drove down to Birmingham, Alabama to share in the festivities.

Jane is the sweetest baby. She seriously slept 98% of the time I saw her. I guess that's what newborns do best. Although, from my foggy memories of Jonah as a newborn I seem to recall believing he never slept and I would never sleep an entire night through again.


Jonah had a great time seeing Grandma and Grandpa and playing with Dirk. He was very sweet to baby Jane the majority of the time. I think he might have taken a swing at her once or twice, but for the most part he was a good cousin.

Grandpa and Grandma took us to the Birmingham Zoo. It was the perfect little zoo for Jonah. I think he walked everywhere we went.

He absolutely loved seeing the animals, but I think the highlight of the trip for him was riding the little train. Jonah loves his wooden trains at home and I think he just couldn't believe his eyes when he saw a big train he could ride on. He was very serious during the train ride; I think he was just trying to soak in all of the glory of the train. Towards the end he pointed to the front engine (my mind is blanking at the moment as to what the correct train terminology is) and said, very seriously, "Choo Choo."
After we got off he wanted to inspect the train.

Here are some more zoo pictures:



We took him to the petting zoo, but he was more interested in the rakes than the sheep and the goats.

After we left Alabama, we came right back to Bloomington so Mike could interview for IU's Ph.D. program and he got in! We are in the midst of making a final decision, so stay tuned.
Instead of taking off for another far-away destination, we took day trips to see some of the sights in Indiana we had been meaning to explore.
We went to the Indianapolis Children's Museum:



We also went to an organic dairy farm near Indianapolis:




We had fun eating ice cream, being chased by chickens, and learning a little bit more about the organic food process.
I also just have to post some pictures of my sweet baby boy. He is seriously so much fun. He makes me laugh everyday.

Here he is "helping mom with the dishes." Notice how he's picked out all of the knives and shoved them through the rack all in a nice, neat row?

And, here he is watching Bob the Builder with his very own little plumbers crack.
Until next time!

Our Little Italy

Our family has been spending a lot of time in the kitchen lately. Here are some of our latest exploits:
Jonah loves making smoothies with Mike. Let's be honest, it's probably the drinking part that he enjoys the most. He still hasn't quite figured out how to drink out of a big boy cup, but the mess it part of the fun too:


My friend Allison and I are both huge fans of Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. This sounds completely lame, but it changed my life. We decided to make mozzarella cheese just like her. So, we bought kits online and made mozzarella together.


There were a few scary moments when we thought we had ruined the whole thing, but all in all, I'd consider our first try a success. Here's our final product:

Fresh balls of Mozzarella!! Next time, we'll use our cheese cloths so we can end up with a little more cheese. Oops. I'm excited to try the recipe with nonfat dry milk powder from my food storage. That night we got together to make pizza with our mozzarella. It was yummy.
Tonight for dinner, Mike and I were craving calzones. Having never made them before, we kind of winged it. Mike was so impressed with how HUGE they turned out that he wanted to take a picture and have me post them here.



The kitchen aside, we are doing great. Mike got accepted to Texas A&M's Ph.D. program and we are still waiting to hear from IU.

The more we hear about College Station and the Aggies the more excited we get. But, it makes us sad to think about leaving Bloomington so IU is definitely still in the running. We'll let you know about our final decision.

Take a Walk with Me...

down memory lane that is. My little sister posted these pictures on facebook for the whole world to see and I thought I'd share them with you here. Yes, please feel free to LAUGH (at my clothes, my hair, my teeth), CRY (at my once natural platinum blonde hair) or SMILE (as you remember just how silly you looked when you were 6 years old).

Me, Dirk, and Kelli at Yellowstone. I am donning my favorite cabbage patch doll shirt with REAL yarn hair.

Me in all my Easter morning glory. I am gnawing on a giant piece of candy. According to my little sister Kelli, this is the "best picture" of me ever. I sure hope not.

Halloween: I am a sorceress. I think this is the closest I ever came to being anything slightly scary for Halloween. I was such a girly girl when I was little.

Another Easter picture. How much more frilly could my dress possibly get?

Kelli and me on her birthday. I loved Aladdin just about as much as she did, so you can only imagine how excited I was for her to get that doll. I remember telling my mom, "I will never get sick of watching Aladdin." I watched it every day for a year.

I had to save the best picture for last. When I say the best, I really mean the best "ugly" picture of all. You can't beat leather boots with scrunchy socks, glasses with ONE bifocal lens (to keep my lazy eye from being so darn lazy), a hideous primary colors bag, and baggy shorts with my shirt tucked in.
And, there ladies and gentleman, you have me in all my glory...well, almost. Heaven forbid Kelli Jo ever get a hold of my even uglier junior high years.