John and Bev Ehlers
Still married to Bev (an Eisenhower Cadet) and we have two sons (Darren and Brian) and two granddaughters (Kendall and Savannah) with a third granddaughter on the way. Our 45th anniversary will be the day of Bev’s 50th Reunion so we’ll be celebrating Aug. 27th with her class in Yakima before we head down the Valley to Richland. I retired after 42 years with the Dept. of Defense but then went to work as an unscheduled employee for SAIC. Being unscheduled means we can travel for extended periods then I can come back and make some money so we can go again.
Our latest adventure was to take our family on a cruise to Alaska. My sister Judy Evanoff and family joined us. Best laid plans sometimes go awry and we found out that our younger son’s wife would be too far along in her pregnancy to be allowed to go and the two of them had to drop out. So we were disappointed but elated at the same time. Savannah is now 10 months old, loves books, and is into everything. Kendall is 26 months, talking a blue streak, running “fast” and exploring her world. Both our sons are Police Officers and one daughter-in-Law is a dispatcher for the Sheriff’s Department so they have some very irregular schedules and child care requirements. That’s where we come in. My main job is to act as a mattress for the young ones. In answer to my favorite place to be I guess it would be in my recliner with one of the grands asleep on my chest. When they are not asleep the two titanium knees I got recently get a workout.
We have a cruise down the Rhine scheduled for next September and would like to get back down to New Zealand again. I was “on loan” to the New Zealand Government for two years and we loved living there. If you haven’t been, put it on your list. The Rhine cruise ends in Basel Switzerland so we plan to travel on from there and visit Zermatt, Bavaria, and maybe the Lake Como area of northern Italy. Anyway you get it — we love to travel.
John as mattress for grandkids
In my spare time I try to finish what has turned out to be the longest remodel on record. It’s close but I have the Master Bath and the walls and ceilings upstairs to do yet then new carpet to finish. Of course then everything outside needs redoing — argh! Of course we’re so adapted to living with a mess it no longer bothers us.
We’re looking forward to seeing everyone. Although Richland and the Tri-City area has changed a great deal it still seems like home whenever we return. I still miss the smell of sage brush after a rain.