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...

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!