Celebrating LOVE...9 and 233 years!

July 1, 2009 we celebrated 9 years of wedded bliss! The best 9 years of our lives! Here is a picture of my great husband being a great father and working his bulging biceps! He is great and as it was from the very beginning, it is my privilege to be his wife. Due to a busy day of work, scouts, library, etc. we set up our date time to be after the kids were in bed. We celebrated with homemade frozen yogurt in candlelight and then tried out the new sofa bed while watching Tuck Everlasting. We had fun and the following night we went to the temple to do sealings and remember those wonderful blessings and that our family is for eternity...whoo hoo!


The next love is for our great country of America. We celebrated at a breakfast and patriotic program. Here are Peter, Ada, and Mary Joy with other children singing "America the Beautiful". We also had Ben Franklin as the emcee, honored some WWII veterans, heard some christian music live, sat at a table with our congressman and his wife, heard from our brand new mission president, and saw some WWII weapons on display. (Then we went to The Home Depot for the monthly kids craft and everyone took a nap.

In the evening we loaded up and went to Antietam Battlefield. It is the site of the bloodiest single day in American history...23,000 died in one day and we were there with about 30,000 and figured that everyone within our site range would have died that day, how horrible! We heard a fantastic concert of patriotic music including some we got to sing to and they gave all the kids flags to wave. They fired cannons and the kids waved their lightsticks and asked when the fireworks would be done so that we could go home. :) One interesting things was that we met up with Elder and Sister Valentine, a senior proselyting couple serving in the Hagerstown Ward (only for two weeks). We invited them to join us and appreciated the help and company of our surrogate grandparents. They seemed to enjoy it as well. I loved feeling so thankful for the sacrifices made by soldiers and their families and felt great love toward this great land. Unfortunately we had left the camera and so I tried to burn the images of my children dancing, marching, singing, waving, eating popcorn and cheese, and watching the neighbor blanket occupants playing board games into my head to enjoy the beautiful moment. I felt like I really lived a full Fourth of July experience.


However, I do have these couple of pictures from the Monocacy Battlefield Visitor Center which the kids and I enjoyed on Monday morning with some families from the ward. After going through the center and having the kids show me all their favorite parts that they had seen with Randy on the other three or four times they had been there, we heard a ranger lecture telling the whole story of The Battle that Saved Washington and then went on a nature trail down to the river where we played in the water and had a picnic lunch.

Other things we did this week include visiting at the home of some of our friends from our first ward in Maryland, they had an open house in their new home. It was fun to see four families there that I had known five
years ago and see how their families had grown. Peter and I took a quick trip to the library and to the grocery store (both necessities, I think)! Since Randy had work off on Friday we took the whole family swimming...well not Levi, at the YMCA.

All in all, it was pretty fun this week except the bitter sweetness of thinking of the family reunions I was missing and not being able to make another trip to UT to see both Randy and my families...so I've tried to be glad that everyone else can at least be together and comforted in knowing that they would think of and miss me (so thanks for letting me know that you did)! :)