We celebrate birthdays in groups at the extended family level. Its an excuse to get together and enjoy our lives together. Today we’re celebrating Grandma Carol and Corvin’s birthdays.
Corvin and Grandma Carol
And of course, other family silliness.
Hogan (me) and Mark.
Brian and Kelly
Grandpa Henry, Corvin, and Sonora
Sonora before she could cover her face.
Hogan Haake
My in-laws celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. Danelle and Brian organized a party at Cyrano’s to celebrate. Many years before, Henry and Carol had one of their first dates at Cyrano’s, making the venue especially appropriate.
We were very excited to have a great turnout. All of Henry and Carol’s siblings, children, and grandchildren were there, as well as many nieces, nephews, great-nieces, and great-nephews.
It’s not a party without a little fun influencing the next generation of trouble-makers!
I didn’t catch the joke, but there was a lot of laughing!
With the grandkids….
Brian and Danelle each said a few words talking about their parents.
It seems that the Haake family has not quite cornered the market on goofiness. Carol with her brother and sister made sure the columns at Cyrano’s would be able to stand up against some massive pressure.
Hogan Haake
As my kids get older, I realize what an effort it is to be a family. Everybody has their own agenda and events that are important to them. But Henry and Carol do a great job inviting us to come over and hang out. And they are always fun events! The excess dessert is also fun 🙂
We also celebrated Henry’s birthday, a great get together.
Hogan Haake
Christmas in St. Louis started the day before. We thought the kids would be surprised with a transformation, so we worked to paint and prepare the basement for them. They were not as surprised as we had hoped, but having a new space for them to hang out is good.
Painting the wall white is the first step of this transformation.
And its getting closer.
Surprise!
Enjoying presents from Santa!
With our warm new “fireplace”
Preparing dessert at Henry and Carols.
Carol is a perfect host and you can tell she enjoys it!
Mom and daughter.
3 generations of sons enjoying time together.
Kelly and Sonora enjoying electronics.
Some evil memory game. With all those brains, I chose to sit out so I wouldn’t feel dumb.
This was the perfect way to end our holiday season by seeing all (most, some of my siblings were not around) of our close family in a short amount of time.
Hogan Haake
Holidays are what you make of them. We were all busy, so we decided to have our family Thanksgiving late. We all met at Henry and Carol’s house. The plan was an evening to eat and hang out. Of course, its a tradition that we play board games.
I learned something interesting today. There is something called “Internet Points”. The idea of Internet Points is that a particular website that you may visit offers points or reputation for contributions that you make from the site. Some of the points are in form of praise for the actual contribution. Many have points that are given from other users of the same site that agree or disagree with your contribution. You can see a person’s points for a site and get a feel if they are a regular contributor and if the community values their contributions. These points can be hard to come by on some sites. But more importantly, they provide no actual value in a person’s regular life…
Why an I talking about Internet Points on a Thanksgiving post? Because I began to better understand them today. I wanted to play the games with the family, but Mark, Brian and Kelly’s youngest, wanted to play with me. I sat out while the others played games. During the games, scores were kept. As the scores were closer together, the competition got a bit heated at times. We’re family fighting over fake points for games.
It seems that the origin of points goes back way before the Internet for people to just find more value in their activities. Why play a game if you don’t know who the winner is and by how much.
Whether any of that makes sense or not, I got some real quality time with my nephew. I think I got the most points today 🙂
Hogan Haake