My Birthday Party

If you count the sheriff, I had 30 friends and family who came to my open house birthday party but I forgot to ask the sheriff if he wanted a piece of cake or pop. He came because my sister locked her keys in her car. (They still help with things like that in rural Iowa.) He brought the tools and several family members helped but it was Mark who got it open.

My dad was the oldest person to attend. He commented, “Not too many people get to go to their child’s 70^th birthday.” Family resembled each other. You could see that my son looks so much like his grandfather. My daughter and her children and grandson have similar eyes. 

The person who was the most photogenic though was my great grandson, Carter.  He is sooo cute and was so happy. Everyone wanted to hold him.

  

Thanks to the people who attended the party, gave food, cards and gifts.  Thanks also to the people who sent cards, gifts, and emails. Thanks to Terry who worked so hard on the yard and supported me to get the party together to make this birthday such a happy one.   

Pella's Tulip Time

My granddaughter, Kari, asked me to go to Pella’s Tulip Time with her but would turn her head when I wanted to take her photo.  Okay, I got you Kari, even if your mouth is full.

Kari’s friends, Missy and Mike and I found seats behind the queen’s court just to the right of the Tulip Toren. It’s a good thing that we saw the tulips in April because they were all gone by Tulip Time. This year’s queen, Alexa Zylstra, even carried silk tulips. Her whole court is standing under the Tulip Toren as they were introduced to the audience.

 

We watched the Dutchesses dance beneath the 130-foot tall 1850 replica of an Old Dutch mill called the Vermeer Mill. 

 Then we returned to our seats to watch the hundred or so people in Dutch dress as they scrubbed the streets in preparation for the parade. Even the little kinder helped.

 
 

   

The evening parade was beautiful. Bands from as far away as Missouri marched the route. Floats depicting tugboats, the dress of the ladies of each province, and even Sinter Klaus were in the parade but that my favorite float this year was the Delft Float which depicted the Delft tea service that Mareah Scholte had shipped to the USA when she immigrated. (Most of her dishes were broken in route.) Notice there are people in the cups.  If you want to see the photos larger, double click on the left side of photo. 

Spring has come early to Iowa this year.  The Pella Tulip time won’t be until May 3 but most of the tulips will be dead by then.  Since we were in Pella to buy supplies for our yard, we stopped long enough to see the tulips on April 21.  We only took photos of flowers that still were in good shape although about 1/3 of them were already gone.

This little girl's parents were taking her photo in her Dutch dress with the tulips before they were gone. 

Marla, my sister-in-law took a photo of my tulips with her camera before we left AZ but I thought that we had plenty of time to photograph them when we arrived on April 13. As you know the hailstorm of April 14 did extensive damage to our house.  The tulips by the mailbox looked like this one day after the storm. 

NB to IA - storm

                       

        

Continuing with our journey, we photographed these silos in Nebraska and the windmills that have been added in the last year or two in Adair County in Iowa.  We missed being snowbound in New Mexico and the six inches of snow south of Denver in the area we picnicked in a week ago.  The weather was foggy in Nebraska and it rained overnight while we were camped but we made it home without any trouble.

Home looked so good to us. Most of my tulips had already bloomed. I pulled weeds and planted the iris that my friend Saundra gave me.

Nothing was damaged or destroyed in the winter months.  There wasn’t even dust on the furniture BUT  thirty hours later we had a hail and thunderstorm that tore up siding, broke a window and screen, and damaged our roof.  Our RV bra or mask was pitted, the clearance lights were broken, and the air conditioning covers were broken. All my flowers were now 1 inch high.

We were blessed that no one was hurt. We are also blessed that we can be with family.  These are photos of my newest great grandson, Carter, who was just a few days shy of three months old when we took these photos.

If you want to enlarge these photos, click on the lower left side of photo to see all the pics then click on the ones you want to enlarge.

  

From AZ to CO

 Nine days ago we left the rocks and cacti of Arizona to go visit friends in Colorado and then travel on to Iowa. The weather was fine through Gallup, New Mexico where our friends were snowbound a few days later.

          We saw the passenger train that travels from Santa Fe to Albuquerque, New Mexico and back again.

 It was so good to see the green green grass of Colorado and visit with Rex and Saundra.They showed us a carving on the side of a rocky hill where it said that "Morial Conrad Moschel pioneer massacred by Indians August 21, 1834." A monument below, put there by his children, said that he was 30 years old. 

 

I think that this is Pikes Peak.  The photo was taken from the highway  near Castle Rock.

We had a picnic near the Platte river with Rex and Saundra.  This is the South Platte because the North Platte flows from Nebraska to Wyoming. I'm standing on the Gudy Gaskill Bridge. 

 

Terry liked the little mine which is shown in the upper right of this photo. This ARGO mine reminded him of the restored Kennacott mine in Alaska where we  spent a couple of days.