Koa's First Birthday

Koa's First Birthday Party - June 27, 2026

Koa's first birthday was in Fort Madison. Can you believe he is already one years old! He is already walking and is aware of his surroundings. He is also making distinguishable sounds and gestures such as waving, raising his arms, responding to people, etc. It is so cute to see him develop.

It took us about 10 hours to get to Fort Madison from El Paso, Texas. I was really happy to see Koa and Malia. I also met Avery's family at the party. We had Koa's birthday at Rebecca and Ian's home which is across the train station and Mississippi River.

Michelle and Malia started to setting up at around 10:30am, while I watched Koa. It was good timing because Koa woke up at 12:00pm and Avery and I got him ready and took him to Rebecca and Ian's house. Koa was so happy throughout his party, it was the first time he saw his entire family together in one place.

The Dutchman Store - Cantril, Iowa - 6/30/26

One of the most interesting places we shopped at was The Dutchman Store in Cantril which is about 1 hour away from Fort Madison. This store is owned by a Mennonite Family. This store is owned by the Zimmerman Family for 4 decades. According this Amazon article, they moved from Pennsylvania in Lancaster County to Iowa and brought with them their Dutch Heritage. The store has supplies, clothing, foods and has become a popular place to shop. This store features items true to their Dutch Heritage and very intriguing to outsiders like myself. I wanted to buy everything in that store because so many of their projects were unique.

We drove the hour from Fort Madison and realized that the store was massive. There were mostly women working and they wore these dresses that go down to their ankle and these caps called kapp. All of them were dressed like that. The supply side of the store featured shoes, jackets, toys, fabric, knives,etc. The food part of the store featured specific food products like flour, sauces, bread products. The cold section had this massive corn beef. I wish I took a picture of it. Since we had Koa, we spent about 1 hour there just looking around. I could spent all day their but since we had Koa we thought he would get restless. He was well behaved so we spent another hour tShere. They were serving free ice cream during the month of June and today was June 30th.

Here is my haul. It wasn't much since we were flying. I think if we took the long drive to Iowa, we could have packed more stuff. Stuff like this makes me want to learn more about Mennonite history.