Hello Iowa!

We are here and we love it! It's been a crazy couple of weeks and it has gone by really fast. Two Fridays ago, we packed up a U-haul and took it down to Idaho Falls where they loaded everything into a trailer to be taken to Iowa. Jason and my dad drove the car out last week and got here about the same time as all of our stuff. They ended up having to do most of the loading and unloading on both ends - they're so amazing! Both my parents came to help us get out of Rexburg (which Jason and I have a new name for, but this is a positive post, right?). Addie and I stayed a few days with the rest of the Dexters and then we flew into Chicago and drove the rest of the way. We've only been here a few days, but we really like it and we're very happy. Even though Iowa City is a small town, it's a lot bigger than Rexburg and we've got all the things we didn't have there (although we don't have any money to enjoy them). Jason is currently looking for a job and Addie and I are trying to put our apartment together and both are looking promising. Also very exciting is that since we've actually been able to have a routine and we've been in the same place for more than a couple days, Addie has been sleeping through the night and just showing once again what a wonderful baby she is (this might have something to do with why we're so happy).

Missionaries, swimming babies and other fun

On January 28th we went down to Provo to take Kim (now Sister Gonzalez) to the MTC. It's always so wonderful to be there. It was the first time for all three of us (Jason, Jodie, and Kevin) being there for someone else. It was really neat. She's going to be a great missionary; we're all very excited for her. She's going to the New York, New York City South Mission and will be in the field the week of the 16th. Woohoo for sister missionaries!

I have a correction to make: at the time of the last post, Jason actually had received 10 invitations to interview. Since then, he's received an invitation from Southern California! He also ended up getting into all of the schools that we were hoping for. He found out about two weeks ago on a Thursday that he got into Ohio State and the next day he had a message from University of Iowa. We had to wait all weekend because they were closed by the time he got the message! But, sure enough he is in! We're so proud of him!

We found a condo to rent right away and we're packing up and heading out on Friday!

Here's Addie trying to help us pack up the kitchen. What a helper!

Other exciting news is that Addie is crawling all over the place and her favorite new thing to do is to climb up the stairs and pull herself up on furniture. Since we've been packing up, we just leave a big box or safe piece of furniture in front of the stairs so she can't get up them by herself. What a crazy girl!

We also went swimming with Addie and she liked it pretty well, especially because Jason made it a lot of fun. We have a cute video, but we have really lame internet. Hopefully we'll have a better connection in Iowa and can upload videos. In the meantime, here's a glimpse of our little water baby.