March 30, 2016

What a month, we have had a high of 78 degrees and today, March 24, a high of 37 degrees,  I guess winter isn’t done with us yet, no matter that it is spring.

We went to Beloit, WI for Madyson’s birthday party. Robert & Sarah had the party at the local roller rink. I hadn’t been in a roller rink for ages, it brought back a lot of memories of roller skating. I use to be pretty good at roller skating and ice skating, well at least I enjoyed it. We had a great time with the kids and Madyson cleaned up on presents, the majority of them appealed to the creative side.

I have some trouble with getting dehydrated, I drink plenty of water, most days between 60 and 80 oz. of water a day. Evidently this isn’t enough because I still become dehydrated and have to go to the VA to get fluids. Sometimes I will go weeks without needing more fluids and sometimes just days, but the VA folks are very nice and accommodating and take care of me immediately. So I was getting fluids on Mar 12 and 18, hopefully this will last for quite a while.

On the 16^th I went to the dentist for more work on my tooth implant. The dentist did some scraping of the implant and said it looked good, so she screwed in a gold screw, I wonder if I am going to get a gold tooth, anyway she said all looked good for now. I go back at the end of the month to have an impression taken for a crown and then a couple more weeks and they will put the crown in and I will have my new tooth.

Last Tuesday we went to Ames, IA to see Tiffany, Matt and Alexa, Alexa’s birthday was on Monday so we got to see them and went out to dinner. Alexa is taller than Sarah and is becoming a nice young lady. We gave her some money for her birthday, she said she was going to buy some books at a book fair at school.

She loves to read and so I am glad to give her some money to help her get the books she wants. We had a great time with them.

Yesterday we went to Des Moines, staying in a Hampton Inn. We have several people we wanted to see while we are here, we try to see everyone but we usually don’t get it accomplished. This time we did pretty good. We had lunch yesterday with Sarah’s cousin Betty and husband Bob at Panera’s. I like Panera’s they have good food and great pastries. Last night we met Dick & Judi and John & Kathy at Smoky D’s for dinner. These were the first folks we met when we moved into our RV back in 2010. They are great people and we have a great time visiting with them. For various reasons we hadn’t seen them since 2014, so we had some catching up to do. Hope we can get together with them again before winter.

We met with our accountant and had great news, we didn’t owe any taxes. People ask me why we have an accountant, Greg Dahm in West Des Moines. I use to do our taxes until ten years ago or so I screwed up our taxes royally. I was referred to Greg and he was able to get it all straighten out for me and we have used him since.

Thursday we had a meeting with our financial advisor and found out we still a small amount of money to spend before the kids get it. Mike Canney, Morgan Stanley, is a great advisor and has done well with our investments, but more than that he has become a good friend and we cherish our friendship a lot. Ashley, Mike’s daughter, works with him and we can call her with questions and she is very knowledgeable about investments and is a great resource to get questions answered. We value this relationship and thank the Good Lord for it.

We met Laurie, Marci and Marie for lunch at the Chicken Coop. This place is right down the street from Marsh where these ladies all worked. We had a great time visiting with them. Without going into details it was fun to see them and getting caught up on all the news and goings on at Marsh. Thank you ladies for taking the time out of your busy day to have lunch with us.

Tonight we were to have dinner with Orren & Norma. Orren had developed a cough and a visit to the doctor said he had more than a cough so he stayed home.; Norma came out to the hotel and we visited a bit, then we went to dinner. Monterey Mexican restaurant was our choice and it proved to be a good choice. The restaurant was busy but the service was excellent and the food was hot and good. We had a very nice visit with Norma and hope the next time we are in town Orren will be able to join us.

March 30, 2016 (cont’d)

Friday we headed for Burlington to visit with my brother Larry and his wife Kathy. We even got to see Jill and Brad, two of their children. We had a great time with them. We also saw my aunts, Millie & Marcella. Marcella will be 90 in August I believe, we took them to Mass on Sunday at St John’s, the church I grew up going to. I lived across the street from the school and church. The school and nun’s house are gone but I have some great memories of growing up there.

We left for home after lunch on Sunday. We stopped at the Iowa Veteran’s Cemetery just west of Des Moines, so Sarah could pick up some Vietnam Veteran Memorial pins from Candi a member of the DAR in Des Moines. The DAR, Sarah is a member, is giving these pins out to all Vietnam veterans.

Daniel called and said he didn’t get the turkey on the grill as soon as he intended and it wouldn’t be done until six. This worked out well for us because we arrived at his house a bit before six and was able to join them for Easter dinner. I was great and we even brought some home with us.

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We had a great trip and planning more to come this summer.

Until later stay safe and healthy.