December 2023

Christmas! That's mostly what I think about when I think about December and in the spirit of Christmas here are pictures from Emily's winter orchestra concert. She's a very talented kid and plays multiple instruments, moving back and forth between marimba, vibraphone, bells, drums, cymbals, etc. throughout the songs. It's so cool to be able to hear her playing, especially when we don't get to hear her playing at home.

Decorating the tree! Fern came over to help and they did not skimp on the decorations.

Done!

Cynthia making cinnamon rolls for our Christmas Eve celebration:

Each year we have our own family Christmas celebration at home before we celebrate Christmas with our families. This year we got to do that on the 24th. 

Emily drew that color pencil portrait of Cynthia:

Then on Christmas we drove to the Conrad's. Remember when they were little and they used to ask us if we were there yet? Maybe that wasn't so bad after all.

November 2023

Cynthia and I celebrated our 22nd wedding anniversary this month! We went to Black Sheep for dinner and Rose was working there that night, too. It's cool to see her working and being all grownup.  

When we got home, Emily was playing guitar. She was teaching herself a Violent Femmes song. She's very musical.

For my birthday we went to the Quarter Barrel cuz I'm a kid and like eating pizza and playing video games. 

I put the Christmas lights up before Thanksgiving and a week later we had snow:

Daniel's Park with the sun setting behind the few surviving trees:

And as is our tradition we went to Sharon's to help put up the tree and decorations. Her Christmas tree base was junk and didn't keep the tree upright very well, so I built a new one:

Alice and her weird obsession with the bathtub. For a cat who doesn't like to get wet she spends a lot of time in there. Weirdo.

It was a very mild and sunny November, perfect for being outdoors.

Novcember 2022

We went to Stone City for our anniversary, which is a town made of castles and medieval-looking buildings built near some of the rarest limestone quarries in the world. The type of limestone found here is only found in a couple locations and most of it has been used up, having been used in architecture throughout the country including Disney buildings. It's an unusual area with a really good restaurant and some unique sightseeing spots. And it was a really nice day for it. November 13th is usually cloudy/rainy/snowy, so we lucked out.

My Mom's birthday is on Halloween, but we weren't able to see her on her birthday, so we visited just before Thanksgiving. Celebrating my Mom's birthday and Thanksgiving at my parent's church:

Then after Thanksgiving we put up the tree and decorations. It's a group effort:

I think Alice approves, although it's her first Christmas so what does she know:

Done!

Before our first big snowfall I put up the outside lights. The LEDs look pretty cool in the snow:

These two are pretty sure that we put up the Christmas decorations just for them:

Fix your ear, weirdo:

Emily had her winter concert at school. She has become a very talented musician and her teachers have told us that she practices her music until she knows it by heart and doesn't even need the sheet music during performances. Also, she's usually stoked to get her picture taken at school, especially if anyone sees us taking her picture. Please stop:

For the past several years I've done the design work for our church, creating the slides for Sunday mornings, the bulletins and some of the inserts, Sunday school promotional stuff, small groups, etc. I also create the slides and inserts for the kid's Christmas program each year and Maggie made my design for this year into ornaments, which I thought was pretty cool:

On Christmas Eve, we had our family Christmas just the four of us. Christmas with our families was delayed due to unusually bad weather and my brother's flight was cancelled, but we made the most of it and still had fun. It ended up being a really fun celebration this year. Merry Christmas!

After the snow storm went through there was a lot of shoveling:

Fortunately, the roads to Independence were quickly cleared after the storm and we were able to make the drive up to see Cynthia's family:

The annual sibling picture:

Once the rural roads were cleared, we visited my parents for Christmas:

And we had dinner and hung out at their church:

It was a good Christmas and a snowy, cold December, but we spent a lot of time together and had fun. It was a good month for playing board games, too.

And on New Years' Eve Cynthia and I read the Bible for half an hour during our church's The Last Word scripture reading. I think it's really cool that our church does that and I look forward to it each time:

On to 2023!