Emily is 15!

 Happy birthday, Emily!

It's 2023

Happy New Year! On New Year's Day we went on a group hike at Palisades. It wasn't even that cold and we were able to walk almost the entire length of the river trail, only turning back when the last stretch of it was too muddy. Apparently a lot of people go on this New Year's Day hike every year, so maybe we'll try it again next year, too.

And this... this is the most Iowa car we've ever seen. You can't get more Iowa than that, unless you find a PT Cruiser with cow spots.

On January 18th Rose turned 18! She's kind of a real person now and it's weird. And we almost had a crisis because we discovered at the last minute that we didn't have any birthday candles, but I found a bunch of sparklers instead:

Rose's birthday dinner at Chili's:

Then Rose, Fern, Emily, and Cora went to Super Skate:

Emily's cool, yo:

Meanwhile it kept snowing and snowing:

And Lily spends most of her life napping, yet doesn't believe in allowing others to nap:

Alice is such a weird cat:

Fix your ear!

If you see these people... just go through a different line:

My Dad wanted to remodel their bathroom, so I helped with the demo, removing the cabinets, countertop, and sink. Then we tore up the old floor and put down tiles. There's still a lot of work left to do, but it has to be done in stages since they only have one bathroom:

And lastly here's Rose scraping off the windshield in the bitter cold before school. Man, that sucks. Glad I don't have to drive to work anymore...

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.

November 2021

So here's November; my birthday, new siding on the house, our anniversary:

This year I turned fortyschmchmmphsomething it doesn't matter:

After cake we went to Speedeez and tore it up on the go kart tracks. We started off on the normal track with the 15 mph karts. These people are bullies behind the wheel, always cutting us off and stuff:

THEN... we got on the racetrack where the go karts go 40 mph. Twelve laps go quicker than you think, it was so much fun:

Huh, our house was originally yellow. Who knew:

Looks like the house blew up:

New foam insulation and house wrap before installing the siding:

I forgot to take an "after" picture, but it looks great. Same color, just a lot cleaner... it looks like a new house.

Also, all the Wash cheer captains won post-season awards, which includes Rose. Go Rose!

For our 20th anniversary we stayed in an Airbnb in Washington, where I of course forgot to take pictures. Sheesh. Some photographer. I love Cynthia and I'm so blessed to be married to her.

May 2021

May is the month of Cynthia's birthday, so here we go...  her birthday cake masterfully decorated by me. I went beastmode with the sprinkles to distract from the really bad lettering:

Does it look like there are two different cakes pictured here? That's because there were, so stop asking questions. It turned out fine.

Blowing out the candles:

Presents!

Then we had a separate birthday celebration in our garage (as is our tradition) with family and friends:

The ragged post-derecho skyline. At least the yard is turning green again and the grass is starting to fill back in:

Havin' a fire with these weirdos:

My cousin Stephen passed away on May 3rd. It was a shock and happened so suddenly. He didn't make it through his 20s and I feel bad that I didn't know him better. There was a brief and bittersweet family reunion when my siblings and parents came out for the funeral.