Our first trip was to see Scott, Liz, and Amber in Illinois. Although there was a snow storm on the way back, we didn’t actually get trapped anywhere so we’re calling it a success.

We visited Morgan, Beth, and the grandkids in February. To mix it up a bit this time, we ran into winter storms driving to Evansville instead of driving from Evansville. We returned to Evansville with Corwin for Easter without illnesses or disasters in either direction.

In April, Pam went gallivanting around Florida with Becky while Steve stayed home to finally launch a project at work that he’d spent 2 years on. At least Steve got some satisfaction from successfully completing the project. Or so he thought. The launch failed miserably and he got to repeat the performance in May. In May it worked.

Throughout the spring, Pam worked on getting that “new house” feeling by:

• having a lot of walls painted,
• replacing the den floor carpet with a wood floor,
• swapping out the basement windows with glass blocks.

This was followed in the fall when a compressor in the air conditioner died. This helped us get that “new HVAC” feeling.

In June, we got to take a vacation. We visited Pam’s brother Scott and his family. We visited St. Louis. We also visited the grandkids in Evansville. Morgan, Beth, and Becky were there too.

One of our dogs, Cooper, died in September. He’d been acting lethargic and not eating much and seemed to be getting progressively worse. We took him to the vet who found a ruptured tumor and blood-borne cancer. We left the vet’s with only Cooper’s collar.

On 9/28/15, Henry Morgan Squire was born. We all like him. Surprisingly, Henry was born on the date that the c-section was scheduled. Pam and Steve drove down to visit Henry and to babysit Hazel and Julian while Morgan and Beth got acquainted with Henry.

The fall was pretty busy for us. When we weren’t welcoming new grandkids or installing HVACs, we were going to weddings.

In late October, we went on another cruise with 4 other couples. We had a great time exploring islands of the east Caribbean.

We celebrated Thanksgiving in Evansville again. The girls perpetuated stereotypes by shopping until they dropped and then shopped some more.

Pam made yet another trip to Evansville for Hazel’s 4th birthday party. The party’s theme was Rapunzel. Hazel was cuter than ever. Steve couldn’t make it because he had to work on that Sunday for a special task that was cancelled when he arrived at 5:45am to do it. Fortunately, Steve wasn’t bitter and didn’t discuss the pedigree of the rat-faced weasels who organized this task.