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.

Christmas 2015

What a year! I can say without a doubt that 2015 has been a very fun and memorable year for us. I'm very thankful for the good times we've had and the new friends that we've made. I hope that I will always remember it all.

Our family Christmas at home:

Justin and Abby came to stay with us for a week and we went to my parents for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Justin played alto sax and I played guitar during the Christmas Eve service at their church.

Christmas at my folk's house:

We drove up and visited my grandpa in Ankeny on the afternoon of Christmas day:

Daphne came up with some creative game ideas. This game involved two people each taking the ends of two rolls of tissue party streamers and unraveling the entire thing and wrapping it around our arms as fast as possible while the rolls stay on the floor. Whoever could unravel both of their rolls the fastest won. Guess who won?

I did. I won.

Justin and Rose tried to see who could singlehandedly remove every single Kleenex the fastest. (Completely pointless, but really funny to watch.)

Then Dave attached two teabags to a hat and we took turns seeing who could get both teabags to land – and stay – on the hat in 60 seconds. This is a great way to look like a complete idiot, so I naturally won that one, too.

And last, but not least... SLEDDING

Emily catching snowflakes on her tongue: