Happy Birthday Margery

February 16th was Marge's 89th Birthday! Mary Jo came to town on Tuesday and she and her mother toured the Durham Western Heritage Museum and enjoyed dinner at The Road House. On Wednesday, John and David joined them and they all had lunch at Grandma's favorite place, Village Inn, before going for one of their famous drives in the country. Grandma wanted to see the place north of Fremont where they once lived.

So on this beautiful February winter day,  they picked their way through Douglas, Saunders & Dodge counties to find the old farmstead. The original house has been replaced, but the white barn and the brick pump house remain. This was the last place they lived before moving to Yutan.

A great way to celebrate an 89th Birthday!

Winter in Lincoln-from Kelly

Hi all,

I thought I'd follow Nancy's lead and post on an icky day outside. It's not snowing, but boy is it cold. I took advantage of the low temps and got myself a 'Temperature Tuesdays' special from Runza for lunch. The runza itself was free (temp at 6am was well below zero--I heard -6, but I wasn't awake yet to verify), that means I just had to pay for the drink and fries.

We've had a fairly uneventful winter except for our recent trip to Chicago. We got some great ticket deals from Southwest and flew out for a quick weekend to visit Mom, Dad and Zac. We did have to cut the trip a few hours short due to weather. Fortunately for us, Southwest let us adjust our flight back to an earlier flight so we just barely got out before the blizzard hit. We managed to pack in some high speed go-cart racing with Zac and Stephanie, a visit with a college friend, free-day at the Field museum and Shedd Aquarium, and some Chicago pizza. I'd call that a successful trip!

With the low temps, snow and ice, Paul has covered up his convertible for the winter months and is driving his 'beater car' which he got on the cheap from a University student last year. Rather than scrapping and warming it up in the driveway like last year, he opted to convert our garage into a 4-car garage. He found some car dollies online so he could move his convertible over to middle of the garage and he could squeeze in the Ford. Now we've got 4 cars, a motorcycle, 4 bicycles and a lawn-mower in our garage. I didn't think it would ever fit, but it did thanks to Paul's ingenuity!

We've also had to do some shoveling in the back-yard and I've walked some paths in the snow in order for Lily to be able to go outside. She got a nice new sweater for Christmas from Paul's mom so she stays nice and cozy in the cold. We don't put it on her often, but she doesn't mind wearing it. I just think it's the cutest, plus it helps keep the shedding to a minimum!

Happy Snow Day from Geneva

My posts seem to have become a pattern....snow day = writing on the Family Letter. It's the day after the huge storm and a day of bitter windchill so here I am again. I've enjoyed all the baby updates and seeing how quickly they are growing. I don't do Facebook, so this is my only way of keeping track of their progress and am thrilled the young moms are willing to share their limited time with the rest of the family. I went through my pictures and found those that I thought would be interesting to the cousins, starting with the Apron Shower for Renee. Mom told us that the apron she still wears (!) is a gift she got from Grandma Bull at her wedding shower. Once again, Connie's handiwork was the hit gift. We all had a great time hearing the apron stories!

We did something in July that was out of character for us--we took an Alaskan cruise. The ship was huge and had lots of entertainment, including this, the human Slinky. One of our stops was at Victoria, British Columbia and we went to the Buchart Gardens. Unfortunately, we got there after dark so we didn't get the full effect, but it was still beautiful.
 Stan wasn't able to hike, but I climbed above Juneau and took this picture which doesn't begin to convey the size and majesty of the state.
Stan embraced the ocean and loved standing on the balcony watching the sea. I'm perpetually cold, so my balcony experience was more endurance than embracing--see the last picture :}
 When we were in Seattle, we found a lingerie store with a catchy name and toured the city library, a fascinating building.
This was such a nice picture of the Schmidt family at Michael's wedding, I thought I'd include it. And Allison and I did the half marathon again last May in Lincoln. She ran, I walked. enough said......... I vow to post more often in the future, dear family. In the meantime, hope everyone else does better than me!! Love, Nancy