Almost Christmas (an update)

On Friday I was able to fly out to Utah with Miciah.   Traveling with just one child who is 9 years old is Heaven!  Course she was crying on the airplane about how bored she was.  "I told you that you'd be bored.  I told you to bring a book."  "I don't want to read."  "Then draw."  "I don't want to draw.  I just want to get off this plane."  "Well, at least stop crying so the rest of us don't have to be tortured by you."  See how caring and sympathetic I am?  I learned that at Mom School.

I was able to see lots of family (and I missed some family, too.  There's too many of you!), and that was great.  I went to the Downs Family Christmas Party and was able to be the one who ticks off Grandma.  It's a special place of honor.  I fought off 5 others for the privilege.

Interestingly (to me), I went to BYU campus and felt no love for the place.  I didn't hate it, but I didn't have any positive feelings towards it.  I do, however, have a love for BYU's chocolate milkshakes, and I was able to get one.  I even broke my rule about not eating if you're not hungry.  We'd just gone to Cafe Rio and it's impossible to be hungry after Cafe Rio, but I sacrificed so I could get my yummy shake.

On Sunday my mom and dad and brothers and sisters had a family party at Rob's Aunt Lisa's house.  She has a great big house that's perfect for entertaining, and we were delighted that she let us have our party at her house.  It was great to get together with my family.  I like them all a lot.  ...  Also fun:  My family doesn't really know Lisa, and Lisa is something of a celebrity.  My brother asked what she did to be able to afford such a great house.  I told him that she started a scrapbooking magazine.  My brother just kinda stared at me blankly.  It was awesome. 

The Wedding
Monday was the wedding!  My brother Collin got married to Katherine and I'm so happy for them!  Miciah and Dea (and others) were flower girls, and this is how adorable they were:

Seriously cute, right?  A friend I haven't seen in a long time turned to me when Miciah was walking down the aisle and said, "Oh, Tamra, she's gorgeous!"  It's true.  She's a beautiful girl.  But she's not cocky about it.  Someone told her once that she was so pretty and she said, "People at school tell me that all the time."  It wasn't a snotty comment, it was just a this-is-the-way-it-is comment.  I love that she's beautiful and doesn't really care.  She's just Miciah and it's nice that she's pretty, but she's still just Miciah.  I'm hoping she holds onto that throughout her life.

This is me and my mom and my sister Lori (my only sister) all dressed up.  Or, rather, they're all dressed up and I'm just kinda Tamra dressed up:

My sister is taller than me and my mom, but not THAT much taller.  She's wearing heals and I'm not.  She's about 4 inches taller than me.  It's funny, our girls, who are months apart in age, are keeping the same trend.  Dea is about 3 inches taller than Miciah at any given time.  It's a good tradition.

Another family tradition:  Collin got married in Sambas.  All the best people get married in tennis shoes!  They actually looked really really nice with his tux.  Much better than my white tennis shoes with my dress.  I should have gone for Sambas, too.  What was I thinking?!

I came home yesterday so that I could say Happy Anniversary to Rob.  He was saying, "I'm sure you're really tired," and I was saying, "Are you kidding?  It feels like 8:30!"  We had our traditional cheesecake and sparkling cider, and we'll celebrate further next week when we have a 2 day date.  Hurray!

And Christmas is in 3 days!  I better start actually wrapping the presents, I guess. 

Top 10 Reasons I Love Being Married to Rob

To my Anniversary post I've received responses like, "COULD you come up with a Top 10 list?"  This is my response to that response:

Before Rob and I were married, I was convinced that I didn't deserve him.  (I still think that I'm lucky to be married to him, but that's different.)  Rob was in many ways more than I was.  More mature.  More stable and steady.  More conservative.  More good looking.  Just more.

At one point, before we were engaged, we had a conversation where I made some sort of analogy about a train.  It wasn't a good analogy, cause I'm really bad at them, but still.  I told Rob that I felt like he was a train ready to leave the station, and I really wanted to be on that train, but I wasn't sure I'd make it on time.  (You're amazing.  I'm unworthy.)  He responded with, "Well, get on board."  Oh.

I think it was later in this same conversation, I told him that marrying him would be a dream come true.  His response startled me.  "I'm not here to make your dreams come true."  Rob had a whole bunch of girls who adored him and wanted him to make their dreams come true.  I'm pretty sure it was common for him to feel like the hero, the savior, the champion.  But it wasn't common for me to feel like the maiden in distress.  I didn't need "saving," I just thought Rob was above me.

Fast forward to married life.  I no longer think that Rob is above me, or like I don't deserve him.  Rob is a wonderfully good man, but he has faults, which is something I was unaware of 10 years ago.  I have faults, he has faults; turns out we were equals in that regard all along.

Sometimes, we'll be laying in bed, just talking about nothing, and I'll say, "Remember when you told me that you weren't here to make my dreams come true?"
Invariably he'll respond, "I said that?"
I'll tell him, again, about the conversation.  About how it shocked me, but about how I actually liked it.  Rob wasn't here to save someone.  He was here to find an equal and share a good life with that equal.
Then he'll hug me tight and say, "Now I'm here to make your dreams come true."

And that pretty much sums up my Top 10 Reasons I Love Being Married to Rob.

10 Years.

Next Tuesday is our 10 year anniversary.  I should be pontificious (I just made that word up) about our 10 years, about what marriage really means.  Or I should be posting the top 10 things I love about my husband.  Or the top 10 things I love about marriage in general.

Spare me.

Here's us in 2000, 2 months before we got married:

And here's us on Thanksgiving Day 2010:

Still cute, right?  :)  (Teancom just looked at the first picture and asked, "Is that Dad?"  Then he asked 2 more times.)

...  Even though I'm not making a Top 10 list, I AM grateful for my husband.  He's a good man, and we have a good marriage and a good life.  Hurray for 10 years!

Elijah Likes Stickers

Since the start I've been allowing my kids to put their artwork on the walls.  I like kid artwork, and they like showing it off, so it's a win for everyone.

But somehow Elijah decided that he should be able to put anything he wants on the wall.  He started with his homework papers.  I told him that wasn't okay.  Then he started putting up images he'd printed off the computer.  Fine.  And then stickers.  Whatever.

And this is where we currently stand.  Join me on a journey across Elijah's bedroom walls.

up...

and over...

still going...  (did you notice the ones on the ceiling?)

and back down...

He told me he was putting these on the wall to "beat his high score."

And in case you were counting walls, that was an unbroken sticker string spanning 3 walls.  The fourth wall:

He takes these stickers off his school papers.  He gets really mad if I recycle the paper before he can get to the sticker.

I might need to put in place a new rule about stickers.  But until then, let's celebrate the best section with a close-up, shall we?

Awesome.

Key West for REAL, part 3

Friday - Leaving Key West
Rob picked up the rental van and we spent the next few hours clearing out Key West Friend's house and packing the van.  Tank said, "Is this our new van?"  I told him it was ours for the weekend and then asked him if he remembered what happened to our old van.  He thought for a minute and then said, "It got broke-ed."  Yep.

Before we left Miciah tried out her shoebox boat on the ocean.  She made this boat at home and then insisted on bringing it down to Florida with us.  She's cute like that.

Do you love how she painted it?  Awesome, right?  ...  It floated pretty well, too.  Rob kept calling it a "seaworthy vessel."

Then we left.  While driving back up the Keys we stopped at the Seven Mile Bridge to walk on the old scary bridge and take pictures.  It was very bright, but the ocean was gorgeous.

If you're ever going to the Keys, I highly recommend stopping to walk on the Seven Mile Bridge.  It'll give you an appreciation for the new, wider bridge.  You'll walk on that old bridge and think, "Why would anyone in their right mind drive on this bridge?"

We also saw a bunch of blue jellyfish in the water, and that was fascinating because there were so many of them!  I couldn't get a good picture of them.  But here's a picture of Elijah instead:

Better than a jellyfish any day.

We drove to the Everglades with Key West Friend leading the way.  We arrived after dark, so we set up our tent and ate dinner by flashlight and car headlights.  It was awesome.  Then we covered ourselves with 100% deet, talked late into the night, and then went to sleep.

Saturday in the Everglades
Some time around 2 a.m. the deet wore off and the mosquitoes and no-see-ums found us.  We woke up covered in bites.  Which made us suddenly appreciative of our after-dark arrival the night before.

NOTE TO ALL OF YOU:  If you ever go to the Everglades (and I recommend it.  Don't go every year, but do go once in your lifetime), go in the winter months and bring lots of 100% deet.  We re-sprayed ourselves every hour or so.

We attempted to see manatees, but they weren't cooperating.  So instead we saw lots and lots and lots of alligators.  (Plus cool birds and fish and stuff.)

That second alligator was inches from us, and that's not an exaggeration.  You're supposed to stay 15 feet away from the alligators, and we were happy to stay away from them, thank you very much.  But this one crossed the foot path moments before we did and its tail was even over the path for a while.  Check it out:

Really neat, but probably not the safest.  He looked so docile.  It was very tempting to try to touch him.  But then you remember that he's a wild animal, he has lots of sharp teeth, and that you'd like to keep all of your limbs in tact.

On our way out of the Everglades we stopped and ate gator sandwiches.  Alligator is actually pretty good.  I'd eat it again.

Then we said bye to Key West Friend and made our way to Orlando, which was only about a 5 hour drive.  And that was good, cause we were exhausted from a long week and not sleeping the night before.  Rob and I took turns passing out in the passenger seat.  He slept and I woke him up when I thought that trying to stay awake for another 5 minutes would result in me crashing the car.  It was a long day.

It ended at my uncle's house, eating leftover Thanksgiving food (hurray!), watching Alice in Wonderland, and then sleeping wonderfully in a soft bed that wasn't the ground.

The kids, ready for bed.

Sunday and Monday - Home We Come!
Our no-talking-about-the-van rule was over now that our trip was over, so the whole way home we talked about cars.  We discussed which new car we would get if we could get anything we wanted.  And then we discussed what we would need to do with our finances to be able to afford another car.  It was a fun time.

After a stop in Atlanta and another much needed good night's sleep, we arrived home on Monday night.  Our original plan was to let most of our crap sit in our van and we'd slowly unpack it over the next several days (I'm a slacker like that).  No such luck.  The rental car had to be back at the airport by 9:30 the next morning.  We unpacked it, cleaned it out, and returned it, all in about 2 hours turn around time.  I was impressed with us.

THEN we went home and crashed.  I think the whole next day I was basically asleep standing up.  It was a long trip.  But it was fun!  Thank you, Miciah, Elijah, and Teancom, for saving up your money for a year so we could enjoy our time in Key West.  And thank you, Key West Friend, for letting us come. 

The End

Key West for REAL, part 2

Wednesday

We woke up on Wednesday and heard Tank say, "Look, Elijah!  There's a rooster in Julianne's back yard!"  Elijah didn't even look.  He said, "There's ALWAYS a rooster."  If you've been to Key West, you know it's true.  Roosters run free all over the island.  I think it's supposed to be quirky and cute, like Hemingway's 6-toed cats.

Wednesday was our day for sailing!  Sailing isn't cheap, but if you're going to go to a subtropical island, you HAVE to go sailing!  I think that's a Vacation Rule.

The kids loved it, of course!  We saw dolphins and felt the lean of the boat and drank all their free water.  Tank was especially into it.  He wouldn't take his eyes off the ocean (which he called the 'sea,' and that's adorable) and he was so excited to see dolphins.  Unfortunately he was the only one who didn't see them.  ...  I think he did see them, he just didn't recognize them.  They didn't jump out of the water or anything, so you had to kind of know what to look for.

Captain Andrew was great with the kids and he let each of them sail the boat.  Very cool.  He told Miciah that she was very good at sailing and then said, "You need to get this girl sailing lessons."  Right.  On which ocean nearest me?

Also, there was this great crazy tipsy guy on the boat with us.  New England accent.  He kept telling us he was from Connecticut.  For the rest of my life I will be referring to him as Midlife Crisis.  I don't think I've ever met anyone that was a caricature of a person until Midlife Crisis.  He kept saying, "Are you seeing this?  They're steering the boat.  They're ACTUALLY steering it.  This is the real deal.  Are you seeing this?"  Wasn't much to do but smile.  "I'm moving down here.  I'm done.  I told my kids, 'I'm already gone.'  It's done.  I'm gone.  I've already looked at 2 houses in Florida.  It's done."  Okey dokey.  And, my personal favorite:  With his third beer in hand, "This is a natural high.  No, really.  Look at this.  We're on the ocean.  The sun is shining.  Sails above you.  I mean, this is the real deal!"  Uh huh.

Afterwards Key West Friend took Miciah on a date to the Shipwreck Museum and Rob and I walked back to the Navy base with the boys.  We bought souvenirs and what did the boys want?  Pirate toys that we could buy at our local Walgreens.  But they were happy and the toys were cheap, so it's all good.

Miciah trying on the old school diving mask at the Shipwreck Museum.

Teancom the Pirate

We put the kids to bed early because they were wiped out and CRAZY.  We waited until Elijah had passed out and then Rob and I went on our real date.  We walked down Duval Street, which is the famous night life place.  The challenge is called the Duval Crawl, where you get one drink at every bar on Duval Street, and there are probably 25 bars.  Rob and I passed on the challenge and just walked down the street, which was interesting enough.  Lots of ladies of various sorts (naked ones in pictures, dancing ones, scantily clad ones, not-really-ladies dressed in drag), t-shirts of questionable value, and souvenirs that you'd only buy if you were drunk.  All-in-all, it was our kind of place.

One of the things that I love about our trip to Key West is that our kids will have fond memories of the island, and they won't remember the party side.  They'll think that it was beautiful and fun and nice.  And they won't know what on Duval Street after 7 p.m. the party REALLY starts.  :)  Hurray for Key West.

Anyways, on our date we went to Caroline's on Duval Street and ate the best key lime pie I've ever had.  We bought a whole pie to take home for Thanksgiving.  Which brings us to ...

Thursday, Thanksgiving Day 2010
The first order of business was taking family pictures on the beach.  We'd been planning this for ages, because Key West Friend is a good amateur photographer and she has a great camera.  I LOVE the way the pictures turned out!  In a few weeks I'll have a large print posted on my living room wall.  Hurray!

Here are the kids all prepped and ready to go.  I wanted to take the boys' pictures while their hair was still combed, since that was bound to last all of 90 seconds.

My favorite part of my little pre-photo shoot photo shoot was that Elijah was completely uncooperative.  Not shocking.  To get the photo above, Rob had to tell him some joke about a chicken.  This is a photo taken moments before, when he said, "This IS my smile!"

Yes.  Clearly.

Then we cooked and cooked and baked and cooked and washed dishes and prepped for our Thanksgiving meal.  It was super tasty, we enjoyed our time with friends, and Miciah decorated this adorable table for us:

Check out how much effort she put into this table.  She was so excited about it.  Cracked me up.  The girl is a born party planner.  (Bummer she has me for a mom.  I'm a born anti-party planner.  Less work = better.)

It rained on Thanksgiving day and into the evening, so it was good that we got our photo shoot out of the way.  Also, it meant that Rob missed his Key West sunset.

...  to be continued  ...

Look at Christmas!

Today I asked Tank if he likes his name.  I'm not insecure about the name we picked out for our son, I'm just curious.  At what point in his life will he realize that his name is "strange"?  (And yes, this is connected to the title of this post.  Wait for it.)  And when he does realize it, will he hate his name or love it or will it not matter because it's his name?

So I asked him if he likes his name.  He said, "Not very much."  I asked him, if he could pick any name he wanted, what he would choose.  He thought about it and said, "I want my name to be 'Look at the Christmas lights.' "  I suggested that Look at the Christmas lights might be a touch long.  So he said, "Okay.  How about just 'Look at Christmas.' "

So there it is.  Tank's new name is Look at Christmas.

(But it's a secret.  So you don't know anything about it.)

Key West for REAL, part 1

 (Whenever Tank wants me to look at something he'll say, "Look, Mom."  I'll respond, "Yeah, I see."  And whether I actually looked or not, he'll say, "Now look for REAL.")

Okay, okay.  Here's the post about our Key West trip.

Driving Down - Friday and Saturday
We are lucky to have good friends in Atlanta and family in Orlando, so we made the trip in 3 days, about 9 hours of driving each day.  Not bad.  Not a ton to report about on those driving days.  Atlanta is much like St. Charles, where I grew up, except with horrible traffic.  Chatanooga, TN was GORGEOUS with the turning leaves and layered mountains.  Florida takes way too long to get through, and who knew there were so many pine trees in FL?!  It's supposed to be citrus and palms trees only!

Arriving on Sunday
On the Sunday before Thanksgiving we arrived in Key West.  Driving down the Keys was awesome, and Rob and the kids were captivated by the ocean.  There are so many colors of the water down there.  Not at all like the drab gray ocean of Northern California.  (Sorry for those of you who live(d) there and love(d) it.  I think the ocean in No. Cal. is an ugly color.)  My favorite quote about the ocean comes from Tank, who said, "I didn't know there were so many signs in the sea."  It cracked me up, and it was true.  In the Keys there are lots of signs posting about water levels and where it's safe for boats to go and such.

The downside of driving down the Keys:  It's a long, long drive.  Miciah was counting bridges and Keys and she says she ended up with over 40 of each.  Near the end of the drive she started saying, "If the next Key isn't Key West, I'm going to die!"  The next Key wasn't Key West, and she didn't die.

Luckily our van arrived in Key West with us.  About 2 hours North of Miami the AC died and the transmission started going out, all at the same time.  We were on the side of the road twice, and when we stopped to eat, the van almost wouldn't go into gear again.  Good times.

Monday
Which meant that the first order of business on Monday was to take our van to a mechanic.  Key West Friend found us a really nice mechanic (think laid back Florida Keys style).  Rob detailed the issues we've had with the van and the mechanic said, "So, when I'm doing looking at it, you want me to just drive it into the canal for you?"  That was awesome.

The kids had a ton of fun playing in and around the palm trees in Key West Friend's backyard.

When Key West Friend got off work and after we'd made a million phone calls to rental car companies, etc., we took the kids to the Key West lighthouse.  It offers a great view of the island and ocean.  And as an added bonus, the man who runs the place was super nice and gave the kids free postcard souvenirs. 

There was a great banyan tree on the grounds and the kids played in it for a while.  Banyan trees are SUPER COOL.

Then we went to Mallory Square for the Sunset Celebration that happens every night.  There are performers of all sorts.  Most of them use fire on sticks and/or unicycles.  The one that Rob and the kids watched was an escape artist with a crass sense of humor.  So Key West Friend and I went around looking at the overpriced jewelry that was for sale.  We didn't actually get to see the sunset because a cruise ship was blocking the entire dock.  I told Rob it wasn't a big deal, cause we could see the sunset another night.  Turns out that never happened, and Rob missed his sunset over the ocean.  (I said, "It looks like the sun.  And then the water.  Not that big a deal.")

My favorite part of Mallory Square was how interested Elijah was in the performer.  After the show was over, Key West Friend gave the kids a dollar each so they could tip him.  Afterwards Elijah said, "We gave him money because if you work hard, you get money."  Umm, ... let's aspire to something higher than being a Mallory Square performer, please.

Tuesday
By Tuesday morning we knew that the transmission was dead (well, we pretty much knew that on Sunday) and that it would cost $2,500 to fix it.  The real kicker, though, was that it was going to take 1 - 2 weeks to get the transmission down to Key West!  Adding together the cost and time factors, we decided to just gift the van to the mechanic and get a rental car for the trip home.  

We went to the mechanic's and cleaned out our van, and then we checked out every car dealership on Key West.  We tried to call it a "date," but it was too stressful to count.  All we really got out of it was the understanding that we could NOT afford a $300 monthly car payment.  So we started getting used to the idea of having only 1 car.  Then I looked at Rob and said, "Okay.  For the rest of the week we aren't allowed to talk about our van."  And we put it out of our minds and enjoyed Key West.

We took the kids to the aquarium which isn't big, but it is fun.  We got to touch a nurse shark (they used to use their skin for sandpaper!) and a baby alligator, which was cool.  We also got to see some big sandbar sharks feed.  Very neat.

Rob touching the alligator.

 The kids loved the touching pool.  Miciah especially was into it.  She touched everything without fear.  She even helped an adult visitor work up some bravery to touch a starfish.  It was cute to see Miciah talk her though it.  "It feels really neat."  "Here, I'll hold it for you."

We also bought Rob's AWESOME Key West hat on Tuesday.  Seriously, who can't love this hat?!

... to be continued ...

Key West

I continue to not feel the desire to post about Key West, even though it was a GREAT trip and we did lots of fun things.

So, for now, here's a picture of Elijah, the Sailboat Captain:

O Florida Tree

An unexpected but very pleasant side effect of losing our van is that I get to re-claim Christmas.  No longer will we be going to Utah for weeks on end.  ... We wimped out of driving across the country in our Corolla with 3 kids in the backseat. ...  So just Miciah and I are flying out for an extended weekend stay, and Christmas is saved!!!

I wish I could describe how excited I am about this.  Seriously.  Thank you, dead van.  I throw flowers on your grave.

Last night we decorated our Christmas tree.  We did a Florida theme to remind us that our biggest Christmas present to the kids already arrived:  Key West. 

While in Florida we collected a bunch of Spanish moss (and carried home a few paper wasps with it) to hang as tinsel, cause that's pretty much what it looks like in the wild: tinsel gone crazy.  In Key West we bought a Christmas ornament and they wrote on it for us:  "Thacker Family" and "Key West 2010."  And then, last night, Miciah and I hot glued some yarn to the back of shells and beach rocks to hang as ornaments.  Throw in a few white lights, large pine cones (also from Florida), and glass gold balls and viola!  A little bit of Florida in Ohio.

Shells and yarn.  Move over Martha Stewart.  Here's Miciah showing off one of the ornaments she made:

I don't know why she's puffing out her stomach like that.  Apparently that's her "I'm so proud of my work" pose.

And the Key West ornament:

Let Christmas begin!

Our Van, a cost assessment

Almost 5 years ago we bought our van, a 1998 Chevy Venture.  It had 55,000 miles on it, and we only paid $5,500 for it.  It served us well enough for several cross country ventures (tee hee), and generally we didn't have complaints about its performance.  I wanted to list off the problems we've had with it.  Maybe it will bring clarity to me on if it was a good purchase or not.

- In the middle of winter the driver's side window (which was automatic) rolled down and wouldn't roll back up.  In an effort to be helpful, 2 friends assisted Rob in breaking a $600 part.  The actual problem?  A $120 part.  Total cost to us:  Just over $800.

- The AC started making a funny sound, but it was still working fine.  The problem was the AC compressor, and we shopped around to find the best deal.  We found Mechanic, who gave us an astounding deal on a rebuilt compressor.  He saved us hundreds of dollars.  At the same time we also tuned up the van to get it ready to drive to Yellowstone and back.  Total cost:  About $800.

- AC stops blowing cold air.  It has completely run out of coolant.  Mechanic can't find the problem, but re-fills the coolant for free.  Total cost:  $0.

- 2 months later AC stops blowing cold air again.  Mechanic still can't find the problem, but swears that the AC compressor isn't the problem, like Rob and I think it is.  Re-fills the coolant.  Total cost:  $100.

- 2 months later AC stops blowing cold air again.  (Get used to this line.)  Mechanic finds a leaky hose.  Replaces it and re-fills the coolant for free.  Total cost:  $300.

- 3 months later AC stops blowing cold air again.  Mechanic can't find the problem, but re-fills the coolant for free.  Total cost:  $0.

- 2 weeks later AC stops blowing cold air again.  By now Rob and I are convinced it's the AC compressor's fault.  Our AC was working fine before that original "fix".  Mechanic finds the problem, but can't purchase a replacement part.  We find the part on our own and bring it to him.  He puts it on.  Total cost:  About $100.

- At the same time, we'd noticed that our transmission was really loud.  We gave the van a tune-up, including a transmission flush.  Total cost:  $400.

And then we went to Key West, where the transmission and AC died in a moment, and that's the end of this version of the story.  (I'm missing a few tire purchases and oil changes and such, but we would have done that with any car, so I'm not sure it counts.)

So I guess, including the original purchase price, we've spent almost $8,000 on the van over 5 years (including that $600 self-inflicted wound.  Am I still bitter?  Yes, I am).  That's like having a car payment of $133 a month.  ...  Not a bad "car payment", actually.  ...  I'm satisfied.

Oh.  And what died on the AC when we were in Key West?  Yep, the compressor.  And it was only out of warranty by a matter of months.  Guess who's fired?  Mechanic.

A Florida Retirement

A member of our family has informed us that he would like to stay in Key West permanently.  We were unprepared for the announcement, even though he's been talking about retirement for a while.  We thought he meant, like, LATER.  But apparently he'd been meaning an early retirement.  Right here.  Right now.

So we said a tearful goodbye.  He was sad to leave the family, but we reassured him that he'd served us well and that there's nothing to be ashamed of.  If you work hard in life, you deserve to retire to a beautiful place.  We know he'll love it here.

We salute you, family member Ohio DQM.  We wish you well.