Happy Birthday "Twins"

Saturday, June 17, 2017
Today both Noelle and Ken are celebrating their birthdays.  Here is Ken holding Noelle shortly after she was born

and here they are today.  Now who is the tallest???

The 14 year old - that's who.  She is now over 5 foot 10 and wearing a size 13 shoe.  We tend to feel like dwarfs when we are around our 3 Pennsylvania granddaughters.

We started out the day taking Noelle and Rachel to breakfast at a local restaurant where we enjoyed the buffet.

Then we left Rachel to shop at JC Penney for a bathing suit while we took Noelle to the second day of basketball tournament play at Grove City College.  Dan joined us.  He stayed for the day but we just stayed through the first game before returning to our place. I was able then to make the pecan pie for the birthday celebration in the evening.  Jen had lots of running around to do and then left food started for the dinner and drove up to see the last of the 3 games today and bring Noelle and Dan home.

Here is a shot of the girls all listening to instructions from their coach

and shots of Noelle in action

After she returned home we enjoyed the dinner she wanted: bbq ribs, mashed white and sweet potatoes mixed together, roasted brussel sprouts and then pecan pie with ice cream for dessert.  Unfortunately the pie was a bit overcooked - a problem I often run into with the convection oven in the motor home (either over or underdone - just never real reliable when baking).  But we still enjoyed it and sharing gifts with Ken and Noelle as well as couple with Dan for Father's Day since they will leave for vacation tomorrow afternoon after church.

Ken got the gift of Amazon Prime for the coming year which we will look forward to trying. Dan even spent some time with us after all was done just showing us how to access videos and TV shows for free via Amazon Prime.  But I suspect the first thing we'll end up doing is ordering the desk he wants and getting the free shipping. 

But the most prized gift of all was this picture created by our granddaughter Abbi - special for Ken who's favorite all time movie is Fantasia.  Abbi has spent the last year working on her drawing skills copying (not tracing but total transfer from scratch) Disney characters working on shading and getting things to look as much the same as possible.  This picture will be framed as soon as we return home and hung on our livingroom wall for all to see - especially us who will treasure it forever. Note the top row of notes on the music sheet that Mickey is standing on.  Her special addition to the picture done with