Happy Retirement!

Chris' dad retired last fall, after 30 years working for the same company. In today's world that is impressive. It's very hard to work at the same place for so long. These days it seems the only way to advance your career is to move around. Chris even know one guy at his last company that had to quit and get hired by another company for a few weeks, and then get rehired by his old company in a new position, just to get the promotion. They just don't promote in-house anymore. It all seems stupid, as he would never have left if they'd have given him a raise, but they were too tight-fisted, yet when they hired him back he ended up with a salary higher than the raise he had asked for. dumb.

Anyway, SIL decided to have a surprise party for FIL at her house. She wanted to wait for warm weather so it could be outside, as her house isn't all that big. She set it for June 11. As I said before, our van was not acting right, and we were worried that we wouldn't be able to come. Since MIL was at my house to watch the boys while I took Troyer and Noah to their evaluations, she was able to take 3 of the boys home with her that day, and we could drive over in the car. The back seat is a tight squeeze with 3 kids back there, 2 in carseats, but Troyer was a good sport and we did fine. I am glad it worked out, because the party was a lot of fun.

The weather was beautiful, and FIL was totally surprised. I heard that he has never had a party thrown for him before, so he was really touched. It got really hot, but SIL has air conditioning so we were in and out of the house a lot, to cool off. There was lots of food, and we got to see some family that we haven't seen in a long while. I brought some chocolate chip cookies that I had made the night before. It had been so hot all week, that even though I left the cookies out on the cooling racks all night, they still didn't fully set, and were soft and crumbly even the next day. They still tasted good though :-)

The next day SIL invited us back over to help eat the left overs, especially the chicken. We were more than happy to come back. Chris got to play horseshoes with the guys; he has never played before, but he did pretty respectably for a first time. He had a lot of fun. I was proud of the boys too, they all behaved very well. Levi is very sociable, so everyone got to hold him and play with him. They asked if he was always as good at home, and I got to answer honestly, yes! lol

The 3 boys stayed with MIL another few days, because she and FIL like to have the company. I was not really missing them all that much, as she had the noisiest ones with her, and it was so peaceful and quiet here, LOL. But I worried about her feeling like I was taking advantage of her and wearing out their welcome, so I had her bring Noah and Samuel home on Tuesday. I let Caleb stay another few days. I have to say, it is nice to be closer to them now, so the boys can stay however long we want and it is so easy to just pick them up again and drop some others off. FIL's retirement worked in nicely with that, since now he is home all day to be with them while MIL works.