Emily is 14!

Emily turned 14 years old this month! She looks so grown up, almost like a real person. 

She had all her friends over to celebrate. They watched movies all night and partied like rock stars.

Lily wasn't a fan, but she's not very good at hiding:

And here's Emily playing drums during a school competition. She is in the back immediately to the right of the director and has red hair in this picture:

Rose is 17!

 Rose turned 17!

And her friends even got Lily a present:

Lily doesn't care about birthdays.

February 2021

We made it to February! Everyone is still alive, so that's good news. Cynthia put together a shelter-in-place Valentine's Day dinner. We had steak and streamed a video of Pensacola Beach on the TV. It was pretty rad:

 

Cynthia made a LOT of masks for people at PCI. A LOT of masks:

And here's a random sunset shot. The sky had such weird colors this evening:

Watch Lily battle her worst winter enemy: static

January 2021

As cold and foreboding as January often is, there are still plenty of ways to make the most of it. Sledding, going for walks when it isn't too cold, watching movies, reading, and planning home improvement projects are all ways to make good use of time.

Lily chooses to burrow under blankets and sleep through it: 

Rose turned 16! She had all her friends over for her party and later that night they went on a scavenger hunt downtown. Dressed like that:

Cynthia made a fancy cake, cuz that's what she does:

Blowing out the candles!

And after the scavenger hunt Rose opened her presents while everybody thawed out. Some of her friends are wearing her clothes in an effort to warm up, ha:

Sledding! The steep hill behind Roosevelt is a great spot:

You can pick up some serious speed on that hill. The fast (and bumpy) ride down makes it worth the trek back up again each time:

See? January wasn't so bad.

November 2019

November was a fun month, as it should be. We went some places and did some stuff and even took pictures of some of it. 

The first week of November I spent in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. The fall colors were at their peak while I was out there and I wish I could've taken more pictures because it is difficult to take a bad picture out there. Driving through New Hampshire:

It's just a Marriott, but this hotel always looks picturesque:

Meanwhile, back at the ranch... Lily hates affection so, so much:

Check out this awesome November sunset:

What do you do when it's freezing cold outside?? Go to Orange Leaf!

For our 18th anniversary Cynthia and I stayed in a Mad Men-style mid-century house in DSM with all of the period-appropriate furnishings:

I like all the milled wood paneling and this nifty light fixture:

It even had a working fireplace:

This was in the kitchen, I don't know how it got there...

We visited the State Historical Museum of Iowa and discovered that there were SHARKS in Iowa at one time. That's crazy to think about. Seems a little more tame these days with cows roaming about.

The capitol is still there, why wouldn't it be? The East Village neighborhood has completely transformed and the rundown machine shops, old apartments, and boarded-up buildings have been replaced with shops and restaurants. That area is barely even recognizable now. Gentrification!

Even though we lived in DSM for over five years, we never checked out the governor's mansion, so we took a tour of Terrace Hill while we were visiting. It has an interesting history and the guy who built it in the 1860s was a con artist who ended up losing the house. Eventually the house became the governor's mansion after changing hands a couple of times.

The first and second floors of the house are exactly the way they were when the house was built. The governor's family lives on the third floor which has been completely remodeled and is apparently very contemporary. The house overall was well cared for and never needed to be restored. Many of the pieces of furniture are original from when the Hubbell's lived there.

This stain glass window was replaced at one point because the second owner (the Hubbell family) didn't like the original window that had an inscription on it. No record exists of what that inscription said.

Kim Reynold's office. Since she wasn't in her office during our visit (she had just returned from Japan the night before and was presumably sleeping) we got to poke our heads in and look around. What I would give for the chance to leave some thumbtacks on her chair... (shakes fist)

Good times!

We visited all of our old stomping grounds (except Gray's Lake because we ran out of time), visited Peace Tree, and stopped in at the Drake Diner, too. The food is always good:

I found this in a box of vintage postcards from the 1930s at the Brass Armadillo:

Game night! With all the stuff going on in the evenings we don't get to play games together very often. Emily will destroy you at Connect 4 and Rose pulls the red pegs out of her ships in Battleship, so... might not want to play against either of them. I'm good at Mad Gab because mumbling is kinda my thing. And Cynthia will beat anyone at trivia.