Photo Wall...

By now you probably already know that Jimmy never does anything the easy way. Rather than just hanging up the collage picture frames that we’ve had for years, he decided to design his own framing system.

He cut out four different size pieces of wood, painted them black and drilled holes for magnets. It was a lot of work, but in early April he finally finished preparing all the frames. Then we lined them up on the floor so we could color coordinate the placement of each photo before finally clicking them into place.

It looks fantastic! Jimmy’s timing was perfect since we were hosting a party the next weekend, although he didn’t know that at the time. He’d love to figure out a way to get his system manufactured out of plastic so it would be lighter and easier to use. He dreams of filling our whole wall with photos. Perhaps a Kickstarter project could be in our future?

2015 Flower Parade...

Jimmy and I cycled to Voorhout to watch this year’s flower parade; unfortunately, we were a bit late and were very disappointed to have missed the kiddie parade. This year’s theme was royalty in honor of the 200th anniversary of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Here’s the golden carriage...

...and Queen Beatrix’s hat.

Clearly this t-rex wasn’t royal, but rather the entry from Naturalis, the national natural history museum.

This gorilla was also not royalty, but rather part of an ad for an upcoming musical.

Co-Chair of Environmental Committee...

For the last two school years, Veronica and Nora have co-chaired the school’s Environmental Committee. Mr. Weston sent me this photo, taken last year in the eco garden that Veronica helped to plan, of “Mother Goose and her goslings.”

In mid-April, Jimmy bought pizza for the committee to celebrate getting the Green Flag Award.

A professional photographer happened to be on campus and took a few photos.

Veronica proved to be a natural leader. Hopefully she will continue to be one in the future.

Green Flag Award...

One of Veronica and Nora’s big goals as co-chairs of the Environmental Committee was to apply for the Green Flag Award, the highest level of award granted to a school for its commitment to being green.

It was great seeing Veronica and Nora presented the flag at the Year 13 Awards Reception in late April.

Mr. Weston, the school’s archivist and big supporter of the committee, was extra proud of the girls.

Last Day of High School Classes...

April 17th was Veronica’s last day of classes. Hard to believe that this little girl that went off to her first day of kindergarten in Cary in July 2002...

...was now going off to her last day of high school. Of course, she still had another month before all of her IB exams would be done, so she wasn’t off the hook for school just yet.

Once at school, she changed into a Russian army uniform costume to match fellow IB friends Maria and Adelina.

Happy 50th, Jimmy!

While a few folks weren’t into wearing costumes, we managed to hide most of them in our group photo.

You can see that a good size group got into wearing togas...

but we forgot to make one for Kati.

Surprise!

Ten years ago, we celebrated Jimmy’s 40th with a toga party. I was at a bit of a loss for an idea for his 50th and then I remembered that we had a box of togas in our garage. So, I threw Jimmy a surprise toga party.

He wasn’t Zeus this time and we weren’t partying in a French chateau, but we still had a great time. Ashlynn was in charge of baking a cake.

Kent and Carlin really got into the whole toga thing.

As we suspected, David, Andrew and John wouldn’t wear togas, so we supplied them with Roman soldier hats.

Terri and I bought identical Roman dresses at a costume shop in The Hague.

Surprisingly, David and Andrew were actually willing to wear the hats all evening.