this house

i love it. i really do. i love that it is full of dyer family memories and i love how much donald loves it. but older homes are not for the faint of heart! 

we have a laundry list of decorating ideas and updates we'd like to do to the house, and honestly a lot of time the thing that slows us down is the decision making process. [which is a nice way of saying i take forever to make up my mind about things...like sometimes it is literally almost forever] but there's also the pesky fact that none of the trees on our property have been growing money lately. 

despite these facts we have still managed to get ourselves a whole lot of new house in the past six months or so. it started awhile back when we decided the next big project we would save for would be new windows. this would be our most significant home improvement to date, and i was really excited about the idea of having windows that would open and close without making me want to punch them. so we started to save.

then last june there was the storm that knocked over one of our trees in the backyard and onto the electric and communication lines. this was followed by a delightful five months of donald making a weekly phone call to google [because they seemed the most likely to help] to ask for them to get their lines taken care of so we could take care of our tree.

by the time fall rolled around we had our window money saved and were ready to go. we placed the order, paid our deposit and sat back to wait for them to show up. then about a week later we noticed a large crack in the foundation of our garage that had likely been there for years, but was now acting as an additional window since you could see through the wall into the backyard. assuming this was not ideal, we made some calls and discovered our house was sort of falling down on one side and needed to be piered. but the tricky part was that we couldn't install new windows into a crooked house, so the piers had to be in before the windows. 

this chain of events initiated what i like to call 'the week we spring cleaned our bank accounts', because in a span of six days we had six piers put under the house, eighteen windows put in the house and, since google had finally come along to take care of the lines, we also had the tree guy come and cut down the rest of our fallen tree.

then just a few months later our main sewer line, which we knew was probably coming to the end of its lifespan, started letting us know it was time for some attention. not wanting to be overshadowed by the shiny new windows, the sewer line succeeded in breaking the previous and short lived record for the most significant home improvement to date. we're hopeful that this new record will stand for some time...perhaps forever.

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a record setting reunion

we set an attendance record this summer with our largest crowd yet at the meinhardt reunion. it was great to have so many of us in the same place at the same time, and by the sheer power of our numbers we managed to claim the resort pool as our own for the afternoon. this was also the year of the rum bucket, as dave and lynn granted the requests of a few second generation cousins to bring back the rum buckets of yore. we enjoyed some special meinhardt themed treats, the mini golf tournament and a few hilarious games of headbands. i think we make a pretty great family.

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an open apology

i would like to convey my deepest and most sincere apologies to my faithful blog reader, and favorite uncle, michael harry meinhardt. at our recent family reunion i incorrectly stated that he had participated in the miniature golf tournament at the previous reunion. i was mistaken. upon further review of the photographic evidence it became clear that the golfing foursome i had remembered playing with was merely a threesome. the only explanation i can offer is that i was simply remembering things the way i wish they had been, as opposed to the way they were.

i humbly offer this public apology in hopes that he will not hold it against me and make no effort to collect the agreed upon wager of one thousand dollars. i also hope that he will one day consider reentering the sport of miniature golf and will at that time agree to play on my team.

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the grand vegas vacation

we mixed this trip up with a little vegas glitz and some grand outdoor adventures. just after donald finished his semester we flew out to visit david. we got in on wednesday evening and david had reservations waiting for us at his swanky new restaurant beauty & essex, which was so new it wasn't even open to the public yet. [and we ate there a whole week and a half before madonna, so we are obviously very important] it was a special preview night and we got to try all kinds of fancy foods...plus it was really fun to see one of david's venues and hang out with him all night.

the next day we made a highly anticipated stop at in-n-out and set out on a road trip to see some of america's natural treasures. our first night we stayed near the grand canyon in the cutest little koa cabin...which would have been idyllic if it weren't for the fact that donald and the altitude were not exactly getting along. we had a bit of a rough night, but in the morning decided that we didn't want to get this close to the grand canyon and not actually see it, so we powered on. it was basically a clark griswold inspired stop, but now we can say we were there!

by the next morning donald was feeling much better so we were back to our regularly scheduled itinerary, and next up was a visit to lower antelope canyon. it is basically a crack in the ground that you climb down into and then there is a long, underground canyon with wavy walls to walk through. because it is located on navajo land you have to go through with a guide and donald's favorite part was learning the names of the different rock formations like 'the chief' and 'lady in the wind'. from there we took a short drive over to horseshoe bend. it's a little funny because you basically drive up to a well worn path, walk over a desert hill and there it is. no park rangers, no building, and no railing. it was somewhat distracting to watch all the tourists hopping around on what is essentially the edge of a thousand foot cliff, but the view is pretty spectacular. we also managed to hit three different states on our drive back to vegas, which we determined was definitely a record setting day for donald.

the next few days were spent back in fabulous las vegas. when we weren't spending time with david, which was our most favorite activity, we were wandering around the strip and eating yummy food. i spent time at the pool which was glorious, as being at the pool so often is, and donald enjoyed some down time in the sports book. on our last night david scored us some tickets to a really fun show at the venetian and i hit a bonus on the planet moolah slot machine that lasted fifteen straight minutes. so that obviously ended up being my favorite vegas night.

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a glimpse of life

this is our life in 2016. donald is in nursing school at penn valley and works part time at the university of kansas hospital. i work for david christian attorneys; half from home and half at the office. we are part of lakeland community church and we love it. we are s-l-o-w-l-y fixing up our house one room at a time. we spend a lot of time with our family and friends and always look forward to dyer dinner on monday nights. we love playing games and watching fun shows. as much as i hate to admit it, we both really love our smartphones. we think dag is just the cutest [even though he is rather odorous]. i love sleeping and i do it a lot. donald loves his recliner and he sits in it a lot. it is a good life.

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anniversary number three

our anniversary fell on a tuesday this year which meant school and work made celebrating tricky. but it just so happened that both donald's christmas and birthday gifts were tickets to star wars related shows and both shows just so happened to fall in the same week as our anniversary. so our third year was celebrated with a night at the symphony featuring the music of john williams and the one man star wars trilogy at starlight. the force must be strong with us.

of course no anniversary is complete without the traditional fried chicken, so we also managed to squeeze in a quick lunch date between donald's classes and enjoyed the fine dining of go chicken go.

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win, lose or dyer

since this year marked don and debbie's 40th wedding anniversary, we decided it would be fun to celebrate with a little weekend family getaway. this was the first time for the whole family [minus david] to be together somewhere other than raytown, and we're already excited to do it again! we rented a cabin in branson and biscuit supplied a bunch of toys and surprises to help us celebrate uncle dj's birthday, which incidentally falls on the same date as their anniversary. on saturday we had a fancy lunch at college of the ozarks and pep pep got to show some of us around his alma mater, which might someday be kendall's alma mater too. 

since the traditional 40th anniversary gift is a ruby, don surprised debbie with a ring later that night [she was really surprised!] and then we played a little game donald and i created called win, lose or dyer. there were trivia questions and challenges to list things like middle names, birthday, family cars, and family pets. my favorite part of any family gathering is listening to old stories and funny memories, so this was perfect.

on sunday we stopped in ridgely for a potluck with the down home dyers and i managed to sweet talk our driver into a tour of the famed rocky comfort on the way back home.

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