Family reunions

Gary and Sarah's - Iowa City First stop on the trip to see my/Stevie's family in Iowa was Gary and Sarah's, I hadn't seen them in years and we had a great welcome. Nancy, who I have such fond memories of from my last visit out with my family was there and doing so well. Sally ("the one who brought the game spoons to England") has her own family now and it was good fun meeting her husband and the girls. I'd missed children after 6 weeks of not working and it was good to finally speak to people on my level again. Cousin Riley kitted me out with a tripod for this picture and shared her iPad gadgets with us during our stay. We often had impromptu youtube video show and tell time which resulted in sore sides.


Went went out to an Amish village and looked at the goods they produce, they make some extremely intricate quilts and live a simple lifestyle without electricity.


....Amish parking lot


We stopped by a cheese making factory (by Nancy's request) and bought cheese curds, locally known as squeaky cheese! It was delicious.


Me and Gary hanging out with Irving whilst making a tour of Iowa City


Chloe tucking into the delicacy that is pink fluff, served as a salad it contains pink jelly, pineapple, cheese....we pushed it over to the dessert category...pretty tasty either way.


We finished our stay with a trip to Iowa City's favourite burger joint the 'hamburg inn.' Every politician who comes through on their campaign trials stop by, they were all on the wall including Clinton and Obama!!


Evelyn and Bill's - Muscatine It had been even longer since I'd seen Evelyn and Bill, we caught up with their family which had grown significantly. I remembered Alex (in the blue) as a 14 month old and Sam (with her new beautiful baby Ellie) and Zak (pic below) as more around my age when we (Ash and Chris included) spent our time together doing everything together as if we'd known each other our whole lives.


...it was great to introduce Chloe to everyone and we sat up with Sam, Zak and Rachel till late sharing stories and laughing lots.





We went down to the river in Muscatine and were lucky enough to see some American Eagles


We then took Chris' daughter Bella to the library, which she loves, to get some books. Chris read to her during lunch, she's got a perfect story voice!


A huge part of Iowa is my Aunt Eva who passed away six years ago. We went to see the house where she brought my aunts and uncles up in Muscatine. It has changed a lot but Evelyn and Laura told us some great memories of theirs which gave us great visions of what life was like.


We love ducks....


Laura and Dennis' - Davenport After the scare stories of freezing weather we were beginning to think everyone was having us on. However, we woke up after our catch up evening with Dennis and Laura to find a winter wonderland. The streets were white, the trees looked amazing. We went for a drive and soaked up the scene.


Our second night Tom and Jenny came over and we were heading out for a Mexican dinner, but not before Margarita's. Laura stole the show with the smallest Margarita glass ever seen!


Dennis roped us into trying the habanero hot sauce which blew my socks off!


I had chicken chimichanga's and loved them, Jenny informed me they are deep fried...now I understand why they tasted so good!


After dinner we went to an arts centre's open evening, this lady is making glass beads whilst we watch, it was really impressive. The young lad in front got very excited at the prospect of fire...future pyro?

Location:Iowa