Danny Hillhouse, Circa 1960 And Beyond

Two crazy kids who fell in love in 1978!
Danny with Jordan, whom he traveled to Columbia with and stayed with at NIC, isolette side with Jared to make sure his little guy was taken care of.
Just look at us cuties, this was our 25th wedding anniversary pictures, taken by Krysta.
The Hoo-Haa Gang rides again, Danny with his brothers Dwane and David, all members of the Missouri 5th, a Civil War group.
Danny and Pete fishing, a picture tells a thousand word, just look at that little boy smile.
Danny, paramedic for St. John's Hospital.
Danny with Jayce, our first little Grandson, what a happy day that was!
Great white hunter, he was proud of that buck, I think the antlers are still hanging around here somewhere, sorry PETA.

I first meet Danny in the early spring of 1979, he was working with the Sheriffs department and would drive to Phillipsburg and cruise around the empty buildings and Nickerson Farms Restaurant where I worked. The first time I knew about him, me and a couple of my friends thought he was breaking into Nickerson's because he drove around the back of the building and didn't come out for a while, we reported him, only to find out he was one of them. We figured he was old and ugly anyway, probably married with 4 or 5 kids. Later we found out he wasn't old, ugly or married and one of my friends decided she wanted to go out with him , which she promptly did. I really wasn't that interested, for one thing he was too short and I wanted to date a taller guy. Well, he only dated my friend a couple of times, then she moved on to other prospects, he started hanging around waiting for me to get off work, waiting by my car and pestering me to go out with him. I finally said yes and we went to the Queen City Drive-In movie. I guess we had a good time because we continued dating the rest of the summer. We were married the next May, I was getting ready to graduate from high school and back then, you either got married or went to college, and since I was not college material and my folks had no money to send me even if I was, I decided to get married. We were poor as church mice and thankfully borrowed his mom's furniture, as she just had went on the road with Wal-Mart, setting new stores with the management team and had needed to store her stuff anyway. By fall we both worked at Nickerson's, me as a cook/waitress and he started on their management program. We ended up living in St. James, Missouri, Newton, Iowa and Edwardsville, Illinois. We were both so homesick and very poor that we moved back home. Danny has always been such a good provider and family man, while he is not perfect he has tried really hard to make things better and easier for all of us. Many years he did without a lot of things, just so his kids could have, like the year he sold his compound bow so the kids could have a new Nintendo set like all their friends. He has driven piece of crap vehicles and held them together with gum and baling twine when others had brand new trucks. He can fix or repair anything, and I mean anything, from swimming pool pumps, to tractor engines, to any part on a car, boat, tiller, mower, or toy. If he can't fix it, toss it cause it is not repairable. He looks for good in others, doesn't gripe or complain much and hardly ever speaks bad of anyone or anything. He has had spinal meningitis, several motorcycle wrecks, ruptured appendix, back surgery with ruptured discs, several heart attacks, with double by-pass and stent placements, just to name a few. He still works and works putting in loads of overtime each pay period. He just started college classes to bridge to RN, because I wanted him to, well he wanted to also but I want him in a safe dry hospital in a controlled environment instead of a blistering hot day on a busy highway working a wreck or a icy and slick February day trying to unwedge a 500 pound woman suffering from a panic attack and shortness of breath from her 1972 single wide trailer in the back woods of Dallas county, I'm kinda selfish like that I guess. We are now working towards retirement, we have almost successfully raised 2 beautiful daughters and one son into adulthood, 2 are done and the 3rd is about half-baked :) He loves hamburgers, steak, anything sweet, fried potatoes, ice cream and coffee with sugar and cream. He doesn't care for anything green or weird. He will dance with me if I ask him to, he will act silly sometimes out of the blue, which always makes my day, he tries to sing, but can;t really carry a tune but he can play a mean Alley Cat on the piano without any effort. I can't imagine life without him, we have been together 30 years now, married almost 29, longer than I was in my father's home, longer than I have been with anyone else, we know each other so well, we still get aggravated at each other over silly things, it's hard for us to paint or wallpaper together as we will be yelling at each other. I support him in all he has or will ever do unconditionally and I know he will always have my back, front, sides and everything else. Happy Birthday my wonderful husband, I hope we have many, many more together. Love you all!!!!