Where did 2012 go? Some of the highlights.

I have been a very, very bad blogger.  I have no excuse except to say that a lot of life and a lot of living have been going on at the Haan household.  Since Joshua and Evy’s wedding on September 1, I have lost complete track of time.   Work, surgery, work, quickie vacation, holidays, more work. 

For a long time I didn’t want to blog because I was waiting to get some pictures back from the wedding.  Those took a loooooonnnnnnggggg time.  I still don’t know if I have official permission to post, but I think it is probably ok.  I apologize for the lack of clarity on some of the pics, but standing still and posing for pictures was not Joshua and Evy’s priority on their big day.  The pictures I am posting are a smattering of pics taken by friends, family members and the official unofficial photog for the day.  When asked if they had any regrets about their big day, Josh responded that he wished they had spent more time talking with people and less time taking pictures.  This made me laugh.  Pictures are one of my FAVORITE things (not to have my own picture taken but instead to take pictures and look at them over and over and over).  From what I understand, Josh and Evy’s wedding day was exactly as they had hoped—a picnic in the park where kids played and people ate good food and hung out. and enjoyed themselves.  I wish I had a chance to pick my own camera up that day because there are things I wish I had a picture of…people lounging on picnic blankets, kids playing on the playground toys, dear friends who shared the day with us  The day was gloriously sunny and it was a special treat to have all of my siblings together in one spot for the entire weekend.  It meant a lot to me that they all traveled to witness our oldest get married.  The last time we had all been together was for my Dad’s funeral 4 years ago, so we were long overdue.   These are just a few of my favorite pictures from the day:



Last minute flower arrangements thanks to a friend's beautiful zinnia patch (and a few little extras we found along the way).



and daisies, lots and lots of daisies, their wedding website was 'a daisy bouquet'. 

All along the right of the room were french doors that opened onto a deck where more were standing listening to their vows.

Thank you Scott for capturing this one…SO perfect, Joshua holding her bouquet while Evy says her vows.

  LOVE.THIS.

The Haan Family photo for 2012.

This cracks me up, but it gives you a great shot of how casual the bride and groom were!

   I love this one because Evy is SO excited!

A combined family photo, again we all are looking in slightly different direction than the photographer—we are SO good at this!

Dean's entire family photo (I shouldn’t say all his family, because we are missing Dean’s sistes and their families, and our niece Dana and her family) but hey, we got everyone else in, even the honorary significant others Joey and James.  The biggest shocker of this picture, my MIL is actually smiling (over my right shoulder)

My entire family—I laugh when I look at this, my sister’s husband (bottom left) I don’t think can ever smile, my oldest brother, top center has the perfect familial smart-ass expression, my mother is grimacing having to even be IN the picture, I look like a hot mess, and of course my girls are cracking up over something.

  see what I mean?  easily distracted…I don’t know who was leaving, but they must have been important.

All group photo, unfortunately the far left got cut out.

So, the wedding done, the newlyweds firmly ensconced in their south Bellingham apartment, we continued on with life.  Kirsten moved into her dorm room at Western and adjusted to becoming a WWU Viking.  Annika started her sophomore year at Lynden High School and we feel into a routine.  In October I had a second surgery and was relieved that no knee scooter was required for post-op recovery time.  Phew!  I think Dean and the kids were happier than I was.  Dean’s Mom fell and broke her hip and collarbone and began a lengthy recovery of her own.  This has led to all sorts of interesting discussions and debates on where she is best living.  The jury is still out on the final word on that one, but the beginning of December she moved back home. 

Thanksgiving, Dean and I decided that we needed a quick get away and so booked a spur of the moment vacation to Hawaii.  We enjoyed 5 full days doing nothing but laying on the beach or lounging by the pool.  We came home vowing that this needed to become part of our annual routine.  It was great to spend time alone, together and reaffirm that we still like each other and really enjoy spending down time together.  We returned ready to tackle the holidays.

Then, these two made a BIG decision:

They asked our permission and got engaged in mid-December.  They plan to marry on August 30, 2013.  James will finish school by the end of summer and they plan to live here in the county while Kirsten finishes up school at WWU.  We couldn’t be happier for them. 

2013 should be another interesting year for our family.  Happy New Year!

Happy 16th Birthday Annika!

Well, after a week of celebrating, it is official.  Annika, our youngest, is 16!  She has been dreaming of this day for a VERY long time.  'When I am 16 I will...' insert a whole host of things that she throws out she wants to do, some of it serious, some of it voiced just to get our attention.  First up, passing the driving test so that she can be an officially licensed driver.  We hope to get this task accomplished this week, although it has been a bit of a challenge.  Test taking and Annika DO.NOT.MIX.AT.ALL.  Soooooo, we keep our fingers crossed, say a prayer (or two or fifty!) and hope that she is able to remain cool, calm and collected and show the instructor what she can do.

Annika, about 13 birthdays ago.

She celebrated her birthday in a variety of ways.  Extended family party was first up.  Followed by party with several of her friends (both girls and guys).  We were dreading this one a bit (will kids show up, will it be the great night that she has dreamed it to be? yada, yada, yada), but it turned out to be a really great night with lots of great kids hanging out to celebrate with Annika.  All night we kept remarking to ourselves how FAR she has come and grown and how amazing it is to see her being honored by a large group of such solid young adults.  

So, Happy 16th Birthday Annika!  We love you!!

A Very Bif and Cleetus Story

Our oldest daughter, Kirsten (aka Bif) is a very creative child (yes, Joshua and Annika you are both creative too—just in different ways).  Last year for her good friend Erika’s (aka Cleetus) birthday, she and another good friend Lynea, put together a story book as their gift.  This year, Kirsten and Erika decided to do a similar story book for their friend Mijo (aka Hijo—aka Bif and Cleetus’ son—don’t ask it makes sense in their world).  The other night Bif and Cleetus sat down and made the outline for the story, assembled their props and costumes, grabbed the camera and got to work.  Today, when I got home I saw that Kirsten had completed the story book.  Once again the final product made me laugh, HARD.  I hope the girls don’t mind, but I couldn’t resist posting the story pages here in my own blog.  I hope you enjoy the creativity and humor as much as I did.  And who says today’s ‘kids’ aren’t creative???

   

Summer Catch-Up

I can hardly believe that today is August, August, August, what day is it???  That’s right, today is August 24.  Last night Annika and I went school shopping.  I was amazed to see that the school supply aisle of Target had been ravaged and was almost empty.  Is it that late in the summer already?  Again, I sit amazed and ask myself ‘where did the summer go?’

We started off with a bang.  Joshua’s college graduation.  After Joshua and Kirsten moved home from college, the blur of activity began to intensify.  Kids finding jobs.  Wedding planning.  Summer Camps.  Kids unpacking.  Kids repacking.  Kid moving.  Groceries, laundry, yard work.  Oh and then of course jobs.  Usually I enjoy at least SOME down time while I am at my office.  Ok, maybe that sounds bad, but when you sit at a desk all day, usually you are able to enjoy a little free time to do a little personal ‘stuff’.  Not this summer.  Nope, this year I have been consumed at work by not only WORK, but also by overseeing the build-out of a new suite of offices (yup, the Friday after the wedding we get to move our entire office from the 2nd floor of our building to the first floor of our building—it will be a good change, but it will also be a TON of work!).  So this summer has been a little crazed.  We are tired, very tired.  But as we look forward to the last official week of summer,  we are glad that we had a couple of little breaks along the way.

In July, Annika headed to Young Life Camp in Malibu Canada.  She had a spectacular time and learned and grew a lot.  It was the first time that we had been separated from her for that long in over 2 years.  It was strange to not have her around at night.  Dean calls her my ‘TV buddy’.  Most nights she and I sit down and watch something together on Netflix or Hulu.  We gave up cable TV a couple of years ago, but we laugh that we probably watch more TV now than we did before.  Her therapist told us once that it was good for her and I to do this, because it gives us time together to work on her language processing ‘issues’.  Sounds good doesn’t it?  That is the excuse for all the TV watching together and I’m sticking with it.  ANYWAY, I digress.  I missed having her around, which was nice. 

In July, while Annika was gone, we decided we needed to get a family vacation planned.  After all this was the last summer before we add Evy officially to the mix of our crazy family, so we felt like it was the right thing to do for us to have some uninterrupted time away, just the five of us.  We got to the first  part of July and we didn’t have a clue how we would be able to get everyone out of town for even 1 night.  Then Josh and Kirsten’s work schedules opened up for 3 days and we decided we had to go for it.  So, we booked a condo at Semiahmoo for 3 nights starting the day after Annika came home from camp.   Never mind that Semiahmoo is only 20 minutes from our house and in the same county, it was ‘away’.  We had a great time and were really glad that we took the time  to regroup and reconnect and relax. 

This picture cracks me up….Kirsten posed, Josh trying to keep his eyes open and Annika wondering what is going on.

We fail at pictures…great ideas, bad execution 

Family vacation of 3 days checked off our list, on to the next thing.  Last week, Dean, Annika and I headed north and east to Lake Osoyoos, Canada.  There we camped and did all things water and boating related with 6 other couples/families.  We knew it was going to be a lot of effort to get our butts out of town, but we decided we would do it.  From the moment we arrived in the 90+ degree sunshine we were SO thankful that we had made the effort to go.  We had an amazing time.  Great people, good food, wonderful sun, warm water and laughter, lots and lots of laughter.  For many years when the kids were little, we used to make this trek every summer.  We think it had been 12 years since we had gone.  Life has gotten in the way and other vacations took priority.  On the way home we planned for our trip next year.  We had forgotten how great it was to vacation with others that you truly enjoy spending time with.  It has been a very long time since we went away and vacationed as a couple with other couples.  Something that we have definitely missed A LOT.  Something that we plan to start doing again, a lot.  A few pictures from our time there:

Early mornings on the water—sun just popping up over the hill.

It was fun to spend time with these two girls ‘all grown up’…oh and Carol, she never grows up!

 the girls challenged the boys to double knee-board—they hammed it up and did first bumps, 360 turns, etc.,  we laughed at them  the entire time. 

I love these two…they have made this trip every year for 21 years!

Our Bobby (aka our Booby)…taking 2nd place in the Osoyoos Idol Karaoke Contest.  He was  ROBBED I tell you, ROBBED…but he will always be #1 to us!

the view from our campsite.

 

So now, the fun and frivolity of Summer 2012 is winding down.  Now, all that is left is to get these two married off next weekend.

We can’t wait!!