Women's Conference

Meghan and I went to a Women's Conference in Lowell. I don't think I ever mentioned that my dad moved out to a place of his own in April and Meghan moved in in May.  She will be here working until she leaves for her mission in January.

We went to a womens conference sponsered by our church. It was for all women of faith, not necessarily just members of our church. The keynote speaker was Stefanie Nielson. I follow her blog and am fascinated by her story so I was very excited to hear her speak.

At the end of the first meeting just before they closed the meeting they mentioned that they had a surprised speaker and out comes

Elder Holland!

And we just happened to be on the 4th row!

He didn't speak for very long but it was so inspiring to hear him speak a definite highlight.

Afterwards we shook his hand and talked to him for a few seconds. It was so cool!

Pasta party

 Friday of Memorial Day weekend we had a pasta party for the crew team. They have a pasta party each week before a meet and it was our turn.

The host provides the pasta, the boys provide the drinks, desserts and bread.

There were 30 boys at this party. They went through 8 lbs of pasta, 8 loaves of french bread, I can't tell you how many drinks but a lot, and 96 oreo balls, and 4 dozen cookies. Amazing.

They played basketball and swam. I was amazed they swam because it had been so cold there wasn't much of an opportunity to warm the water before they came but they informed me that "crew boys don't worry about the water temp" Well excuse me! They may talk big, but nobody stayed in the pool for very long. ;-)

I was really impressed with these boys and so thankful that Ben and Luke are part of such a great group.

Memorial day

Memorial day is a small, simple holiday in our town but it's one that I'm enjoying more and more every year.

Here is the holiday in a nutshell.

About 30 minutes before the parade starts we gather in the town center. This year, Meghan, my dad, our friend James, and Jake (it was Jake's first parade) joined us for the day.

The parade is about 15 minutes long and it consists of (in this order)

The flag and firetrucks

These incredibly good looking two guys and the high school marching band


Some scout and brownie troops. The kid on the right is Matt, a very good friend of Josh.

Some adorable old Veterans in cool old cars

Some town dignitaries and then this incredibly good looking guy in the middle school band to wrap up the town parade.

We have a small ceremony at the town center. There is a speaker, the pledge of allegiance is said, they lay a wreath at the veterans memorial that we have in town and Josh and his band played the most beautiful rendition of America the Beautiful I have heard them play.

Afterwards, people march with their flags to our town cemetery to honor the veterans that have been buried there.

The names are read for those that were killed, a song is song, a prayer is said a moment of silence was had. They had a 21 gun salute, played taps, then Ben and Luke and the band played Amazing Grace. The End.


Ben had a few focus issues during the ceremony and was forced to entertain himself. The girl providing the hair for his entertainment had no idea this was even happening until after it was all over.


This entire morning only took about 2 hours. It's not a huge celebration but its enough to help me think twice about the sacrifices that were made for me, my family and for our country, something that I've probably never really thought much about before but appreciate it more every year.

I was also thankful to celebrate the day with my dad who is a veteran. I am proud of the time that he served, for the huge sacrifices he made during our time as kids so that he could serve our country.

I love watching him during those quite moments when a flag is being raised, a solider is being honored, or a patriotic song is being sung very rarely does he have a dry eye during those times. His love for our country has made me love and appreciate it so much more.


Mike has been building BMX bikes in his spare time and tried them out today. The boys rode them after the ceremony and Mike showed us a trick or two when we got home.






Afterwards, the Shupes and the Williams came over for a BBQ. This weekend was crazy. Sunday night at about 10pm is when it first dawned on me that we were having people over the next day. We had had the crew party on Friday, been gone all day Saturday at the womens conference, and had the missionaries over for dinner that night and been to a baptism and had more people over on Sunday night. I was so tired, I went to bed with a mess in my kitchen and had no idea what we were going to eat for the party the next day but sleep was more important. 

When the parade was over, we quickly cleaned our house, and I pretended we had enough food for everyone. Thankfully the Shupes, Williams, and James brought food too and the day ended up to be perfect.
I took very few pictures of the day. I was tired and wanted to relax and enjoy it without a camera in my hand, sometimes that's a nice change.




     

Seminary

Jessica, a good friend of ours, was the boys seminary teacher this year. She was an amazing teacher. She got up every morning at 4am to make sure she was ready each day to welcome the kids with the proper spirit. She provided them breakfast every day, she had excellent teaching skills, created opportunities for discussion, and went above and beyond to make sure that those kids knew that she loved them.

It was interesting to see how much those kids felt that love and the spirit that was in her room and how much they wanted to be there and how much they wanted to please her. They were a few months into the year before she even had a child that was absent in her class. There were numerous stories told from kids who were up until the wee hours of the morning finishing their homework  but weren't about to sleep a little longer and miss seminary.

I am very thankful for her willingness and sacrifice on mine and the other kids behalf. My kids learned and grew to love the Doctrine and Covenants.

The last day of seminary was a seminary party with breakfast and a silly string war.

The perfect picture :)

Thanks Jessica for a fantastic year.

NYC, Brooklyn and the family

 For our April date Mike and I met his brother and his wife, Casey and Amy in New York. They were their on a little vacation and we couldn't resist taking the day off to spend it with them.

This day was so much fun.  Mike and I were both on a happy high for several days afterwards.

 First we took a ferry to Brooklyn and spent most of the day there.

Amy is awesome to travel with, she had done all sorts of research and had a list of things to do, see and places to eat in each area of NYC, all we had to do was decide from that list what we wanted to do. The fact that we didn't have to constantly ask the question "what should we do next?" and that I wasn't in charge of the schedule, made the day even better!

First stop was lunch at Julians for some delicious famous pizza for lunch.

Next stop was a brilliant idea of ours and a highlight of the day for me.

We rented bikes and rode all over Brooklyn and lower Manhattan. There are bike stations all over the city. You pay a small fee that will then give you access to the bikes all day long. We would ride to our next stop, drop the bikes off at a station, go see what we wanted to see and then pick up another bike and ride to the next place that we wanted to go. It was so much fun and such a GREAT way to see the city. We saw so much and didn't have tired, sore, achy feet by the end of the day. Bonus!

We rode all along the greenway which is a path right along the coast and has been designed with trees, flowers, gardens, parks, playgrounds etc. it was beautiful.



 we stopped for ice cream at the Brooklyn ice cream factory
 

We spent some time touring around Brooklyn Heights

 We walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. 

That is an amazing structure.

We left our mark on the bridge

 We got some more bikes at the other side of the bridge and rode our bikes several blocks to our place for dinner.

 We rode all through Chinatown and all during rush hour traffic, when you're on a bike there aren't any traffic issues. That is lovely

 We had dinner at a delicious BBQ restaurant that I can't remember the name of but it was so good.
Sadly the good day had to come to an end, we said our goodbyes and went home happy.