10years, 10 Years!!, 10 YEARS!!!

I cannot believe it but today is our 10th anniversary. It is shocking how very fast these years have sped by! That's 10 years, 5 different addresses, 6 vehicles. 2 dogs, 5 jobs between us, and 2 children. That's crazy! They've been 10 amazing years and I wouldn't have wanted to share them with any other person in the whole world!

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Happy 10th Luke!

A Wedding

We took a looong day trip up to Portsmouth, NH this past Saturday for a wedding. Luke's youngest cousin, Allie was married by her father in the church where she met her husband. It was a really sweet ceremony filled with memories of her adoption from Japan and admonishments to not let the FIRE die: Remember to Forgive, remember Intimacy, remember Restraint, and remember Encouragement. A good reminder to all the married couples there let alone the newlyweds. And as Luke and I are coming up on our TENTH anniversary it was especially poignant. It was also very encouraging to see about 90% of the guests get up to partake in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper that was offered.

We all had a fabulous time at the reception. Especially the kids who were dancing MANIACS. I had no idea! Both Noah and Lily were so excited to get out on that dance floor and I am pretty sure Lily didn't sit out a song while Noah would only dance to really "cool rock" songs. We left at 10:30 PM and Lily was still raring to go.

Here's the kids while we were waiting to head over to the church

This dress was an amazing find from Strasburg Children, which is a rather posh boutique. Luke's mom and grandmother and I were out shopping and went in on a whim and found this $125 dress on clearance for $20. SCORE! When we brought it home and she saw it she had to try it on right away and exclaimed, "I Cinderella!", as she twirled around.

The Bride and Groom, Allie and Ryan, cutting the cake that Becky made for them
Allie and Noah

Because Allie had 5 of her neices in her wedding, she had quite a few kids at the reception so they were all provided with goody bags that had stuff to keep them busy at their table and before the dancing began the dance floor was strewn with costumes and hoola hoops for the kids to enjoy.

And then there was dancing!

Lily danced with a bridesmaid whom she had never met before--she just went over and grabbed her hand and started spinning. She was somewhat discriminating and refused to dance with the older man who kept trying to pull her back into the fray. I am sure he just thought she was cute and wanted to help her join the other kids who were in the center of the circle. She wasn't having any of it though. I was glad I was there to 'rescue' her as he was a bit persistent. Sheesh.

And of course she had to dance with her Daddy...

Snapshots from Rhode Island

We headed to Rhode Island for another visit. We just had to see this Molly Beth for ourselves. We got the added bonus of seeing my Uncle Rich, Aunt Beth, and cousin Cameron as well since they were visiting. Patrick's parents were also there so it was a veritable crowd and we all had a grand time catching up and cuddling with the new baby bundle.

We went to a nice park for cake and ice cream in celebration of E's recently passed 2nd birthday

Seeing that band-aid on Lily's arm reminds me of a funny story...She had a vaccine the other day and it really wiped her out. I wasn't too aware of how it was affecting her until I found her asleep with her head between her knees whilst sitting on the potty.

Holdin' Molly

Lily and Noah are both completely enamored of 'Uncle' Cam and were playing with him and bringing him books to read all evening. It was really sweet.

Kiddos

Some forgotten pictures from springtime:



And some from today:

a beautiful sight

the watchers

what they were watching

upgrades

I'm Free!

I saw my doctor again yesterday. I am out of the boot and am now in a hard sole shoe and don't really need my crutches anymore. This is such a relief to me! And to celebrate I am going on a short jaunt to the grocery store. It's been about 7 weeks since I've been there and I can't say that I missed it really but it will be nice to go and do something for myself. I've been doing the laundry again too. Laundry has always been my nemesis so it was kind of nice to have a break from it but now I can honestly say that I don't mind getting back to it (except for the fact that now that it's summer our basement is home to many creepy crawly things including these rather large ugly crickets. I'm not afraid of bugs but I don't particularly like them when they jump out at me from the shadows of from under a pile of laundry I am moving--they tend to make my heart skip a beat). Who knew?!

There's nothing like a little forced couch time to make you appreciate the small things in life (can't say that I recommend this particular method though). It is so very nice to be standing on my own two feet again!