50

These two love birds are celebrating 50 years of wedded bliss today!

Love you guys!  Hope you have a wonderful day celebrating in the sunshine!

TOLO

My boy Sam went to his first school dance a couple weeks ago.  It was a girl asks the boy thing.  In my day and in my high school, they called it a Sadie Hawkins dance but here it's called Tolo.  Doyle asked me what Tolo meant and I had no idea.  He sent me this later.  Thought some of the locals might be interested.

Sam got asked by his friend Emma.  In my day, the girl asked the guy by writing him a note and drawing two little boxes where he could check "yes" or "no" and then giving the note to a friend to give to his friend to give to the boy.  Here it is quite the production with posters and props.

Before dinner and the dance, the group they went with met in our shop to take pictures.  Most of these were taken by my friend Julie (he daughter Becca is in the group too).  Thanks Julie!
Here the girls attempting to pin the boutonnière on their guys.  I think most of the moms had to step in and help!

Pretty girls. 

 Handsome guys.

The guys were saying it would be fun to take pictures with shades on but none of them brought any along so Katie went and dug through her dress-up bin and found a pair for all of them!

I got these shots of the paparazzi.

Just reminding my guy who his number one girl is!

p.s. He had a great time!

 

Some January Stuff

Dear January,
I don't like you.  You are a yucky month that is long and dark and cold.  Christmas is over and there isn't another good holiday until Easter.  I turn another year older which really isn't much fun anymore because it just means that I need my magnifying glasses and large doses of Ibuprofen more often.  You are the month where I do something stupid like attempt to give up coffee creamer or French fries. You are the month where I have to send Holly back to school and I don't get to see her until May.  Sorry, but you just stink.
Sincerely,
DeAnn
Moving on...
I had a nice birthday, despite the reading glasses and Ibuprofen.  It didn't sting quite so much as usual because for some reason all last year I thought I was 48 and I didn't realize until John's birthday in October that I was not so this year when I actually turned 48 it was like I didn't grown another year older.  Katie and her friend Brooklynn decorated all pretty and set up a sundae bar in honor of my big day.  It was very sweet.

Unfortunately for me, I am avoiding sweets (it being January and all) so all I could partake of from the sundae bar was bananas.

I received lots of nice cards for my birthday but I think my favorite one was from Ryan.

He is the most considerate skeleton I ever knew.

Right before Christmas, we found out we had a leak in our water line.  Not cool.  A new water line is not really a fun Christmas present.  Now if you know my husband, you know that for some reason he can not have the excavator guy out and just have him do one thing he was hired for.  One theory I have is that my husband secretly wishes he was an excavator guy.  He is living vicariously through him or something like that.  Anyhow, after the line was dug and installed, they were out in the back yard digging up stumps, moving dirt and doing these jobs.
Digging around the party barn so that this summer we can put a new foundation under it.

And removing all the cement around the cottage.

John has also been working on his bathroom in the shop.

Holly left for a choir tour as soon as she got back to Dordt.  They stuck around the Midwest which was lots of fun because that meant she had some fans in some of the audiences.  Her cousin Rachel was her choir buddy.

Grandma, Uncle Doug and Aunt Sue, Stephen and Emily were at their first performance in Wisconsin.  Stephen and Emily were their host family too.

They spent a day in Chicago.

And had another performance at our old church in Des Moines.  My former boss and her husband hosted them there.  So cool!

One evening Sam and I were the only ones home for supper.  He told me he would cook for me.  It was the best mac and cheese I ever had.

Some pretties in my yard.
My hellebores are blooming!

And I know their prickly, but I do love my holly.

This one too!

It's always kind of fun watching our creek change in the winter.  Our log that we use for our bridge gets covered with water.

This is actually a December picture but I completely forgot to blog about it and it is so blog worthy!  Susie made John and I Dordt University underwear for Christmas!  This package was waiting for us when we returned from Arizona.  I was commenting to her over parent's weekend that the Dordt bookstore sold everything except underwear.  I seriously think Dordt should think about selling these beauties, who wouldn't want Dordt University underwear?!

The eclipse was pretty cool.

Okay January, I guess you aren't all bad.

Having Holly Home

Once we were back from our Christmas in Arizona we had a week of having Holly home, no school for Sam and Katie and no work for John.  We had such a nice break.  We didn't really have anything special planned so we just slept in (except for John who never sleeps in) and enjoyed the days.
A couple of highlights from our week.
*Holly took Sam TOLO shopping one afternoon.  I am not an Instagram person but apparently she posted some funny photos of that experience.  Let's just say that Sam is not a real cooperative shopper.  I was SO HAPPY when they came home with pants, a shirt and suspenders.  I ordered him three bow ties off of Amazon so hopefully he likes one of them and we are all set!
*One evening when Sam and Katie had plans Holly made stir fry for supper.  Either she makes a much better stir fry than I do or it just tastes a lot better when I don't have to make it!
*I scheduled a "Just Holly and Mom Day" and told my girl we could do whatever she wanted.  She chose manicures and a visit to the Lynden Pioneer Museum.  It was only the second manicure for both of us and we got all trendy and did the French tip gel thing.

We admired our beautiful nails all day and pointed them out to whoever seemed remotely interested.

*John decided his New Year's resolution was getting rid of stuff we (not sure how the rest of the us got added to his resolution) don't need thus "THE GREAT PURGE OF 2019" began.  We started in the basement.

It was a family affair with John and Sam disassembling a broken treadmill, Katie cleaning the dust off stuff to sell, Holly posting the stuff on Facebook and me supervising the process.

*The purge continued with John's closet.  Holly deemed most of his work attire outdated and, to be fair, she was probably right.  Holly's shopping service - part two - was commenced that afternoon.  She said her dad was only slightly more cooperative than Sam.

*We had some of  our Washington family over on New Year's evening.  We had dinner together and played some Farkel.  By the way, I hate that game.  I'm fairly sure I have never won a game of Farkel.

Holly decided she wanted to make Olie Bollen so she borrowed her aunt's fryer and got the ingredient.  I banished her to the shop because I didn't want my house to smell like grease. Katie pretty much needs to be wherever Holly is when she is home so she helped.  They were delicious!  

*Our annual-Christmas-break-movie-going adventure this year featured "Aquaman".  The movie was just okay (I'm not really into super heroes and I prefer them with short hair) but the big tub of popcorn was really good.

*Holly got her hair cut and came home with BANGS!  She hadn't had bangs since she was five.  Personally, I love them however little sister cried when she saw her, apparently Katie isn't really into change.

*One afternoon on the way home from the grocery store, we made a spontaneous stop at the Wayside Chapel just because Holly had never been there before.

 *These two made supper for us all one night.  They also made these amazing chocolate/peanut butter bars.  Those bars were so yummy that I am still thinking about them.

We miss you Holly but it was so fun having you home!  Happy last semester of college!

An Arizona Christmas

Holly came home in a big windstorm Thursday night.  John had to clear tree debris off the yard before him (and Katie) could pick her up from the airport and we were without power for about 12 hours.
So good to have all the chicks back in the nest...even if the nest was dark.

We spent Friday having a family-clean-up-tree-debris-party.  The levels of enthusiasm varied by family member.

Bright and (very) early Saturday morning, we were on a plane to ARIZONA!

We boarded the plane in the rain and cold wearing our jeans and sweatshirts.  We got off the plane two hours later in the warm and bright sunshine and quickly shredded those sweatshirts!

Grampa and Gramma were waiting for us at the airport.  We grabbed a quick lunch at Chik-fil-a, drove to our rental house and were in the pool by 2:00.

The Koele family got in just a couple hours later.   Amy (ever our amazing travel agent) had read about a guided moonlight hike at a park near our house so mom got out her maps to show us where to go. 

The hike wasn't quite what we were expecting but we had fun anyway.   

On Sunday a van-full of us checked out the swap meet and the rest of the day was spent in the pool.
Our house was on a golf course.  The backyard was small but had an outdoor fireplace, grill, plenty of seating for all of us and our favorite part - the pool and hot tub!

The pool was heated to 86 degrees.  It was pretty great.

On Monday (Christmas Eve) we took a tour of an olive farm just a couple miles from our house.

Nicholas the parrot was having lunch at the olive farm and his owner asked the kids if they wanted to meet him.

 Nicholas really loved Chase (maybe cause he's so tall?) but he tolerated these two.

The rest of the day was spent in the pool and playing games.

The pool table got lots of use!  We discovered our Katie is actually pretty good at it.

That evening we went to a nice candlelight service at a Lutheran church near our house.
Christmas day started with a walk around the neighborhood.
People try really hard to decorate but for some reason Christmas lights wrapped around cactus's and palm trees just doesn't look quite right!  Not complaining though - I think I could get used to it!  These particular folks even put fake snow in their yard!

Roses in December.

Here's our house from the front.

Uncle Rich and Aunt Henrietta drove up from Tucson and spent the day with us.  We had a delicious lunch, played games, went in the pool, and took some pictures in the back yard.

Amy is a much nicer person than me!

Grampa and the boys.

Toasting 50 years!

Our last day we went back to the moonlight trail and hiked it in the daylight.

The sun must have been a little too much for Sam and Katie!

Kurt poking sticks into snake holes.

Finally spotted a little lizard!

Lucky for us this guy was behind glass at the visitor's center.  He really rattled when you got close to the glass!

One last time in the hot tub!

That night we went out for supper.  My sister found this cool place where you eat outside in a big courtyard.  There was a live band and wood to build your own fire.

We even had smores for dessert.

After we got home we had a pool tournament.  I believe these two lovebirds were the big winners but we might have let them win since they did pay for our vacation!

Then it was off to bed since our flights left early Thursday morning.  

Almost forgot...Sam and Chase had a room with two king-sized beds in it.  Sam LOVED it, especially since he's the one usually stuck on the floor in a sleeping bag when were on vacation!

Thanks Dad and Mom for a WONDERFUL Arizona Christmas!
Happy Anniversary!