My Country Girl

For several days in June Savannah and two of her best friends, Mary and Michaela, and their boyfriends spent time in Jersey at Barefoot Country, this huge country music festival. She had a ton of fun! Some of her favorites were the Florida Georgia Line concert and Ernest's concert, but her absolute favorite was Jason Aldean who performed the last night. She also loved going to the beach, spending time with her friends, and watching All American. The funniest moment of the weekend was when some dad told his 8 year old son to put the moves on Savannah when they found out she was single, ha ha!

One of my favorite pictures of my beautiful country girl!

Father's Day 2022

We love honoring the fathers in our lives on this special day so of course we made sure to stop at the cemetery and put fresh flowers on Dad's grave. As always, I told him how much I miss him and love him. What a tremendous blessing to have him as my dad!

Then we headed back to our house for a special dinner.

While Mom enteretained the kids inside...

the adults enjoyed the meal and the weather outside! We also made a pact to share our lottery winnings when one of us wins and made plans on how to spend the money, ha ha! We're all in this together!

These kids sure are lucky to have such great dads!!

Twenty Years!!

What a blessing to have Savannah home this year for her birthday! What can I say? She's absolutely amazing and we love her to pieces! We're so proud of all she is doing in her life - she loves the Lord, she works hard in school, shes's sassy and funny, she's got the best laugh, she's (mostly) kind to her brothers, she loves to work out, to read, to watch movies, to see new places, and to eat ice cream! We missed celebrating with her last year so tried to make her 20th a special one. 

She accompanied David and I to Costco and scored a churro for hanging with us.

She then got to open a gift (one of our traditions - a present to start the day)...

and enjoyed some of David's delicious cinnamon rolls that he made just for her.

One of the highlights of her special day was shooting at the range with David.

She picked steak for her birthday dinner...

and then it was time for opening gifts!

Some favorites this year...

We topped off the day with Graters!

Savannah and I then headed down to spend the night at Mom's since Savannah had an early flight the next day to Maryland. She got to celebrate her birthday a little longer with Mom and Bryan.

Although Savannah was not thrilled about turning 20, I think she still enjoyed her special day!

Party Time!

Two days after we returned home from Maryland we celebrated the end of the school year with a fabulous party at the Clark's house! 

The favorite water slide which I refuse to get on after I hurt myself going down several years ago. But the kids all seem to love it! Oh, to have a young body again.

Swimming...

chillin' with friends...

Brock, ha ha...

tons of good food, and even an exciting game of Phase 10! Xander invited his friend Jason so of course Heidi and I spent the evening trying to make sure he enjoyed himself and probably came off as the two goofiest ladies around! We probably won't see him again, ha ha!

DC and the Temple

Thursday morning we headed to the DC Temple open house. Wow, it felt amazing to be back at this very sacred place. The DC temple was our temple for 15 years so it holds a special place in our hearts. What a joy it was to walk inside, see all the changes, feel the Spirit, and share the experience with Savannah and Noah. And it couldn't have been a more beautiful day to grab pictures outside!

Waiting in the line outside. It was great to see how many people were there!

As we were walking back to the parking lot at the church next door, we came across a couple taking pictures in this little spot that we never would have discovered if we hadn't had to park so far away. This couple told us they had been married here years and years ago and this was one of the spots they found on their wedding day. So of course we had to grab a few pictures there as well. I love that it's a little known spot with a beautiful view of the temple.

After the temple we grabbed some lunch and then headed to Ford's Theater, something I have wanted to do for years and for some reason we never did while we lived in Maryland. However, when we went inside to get our tickets, to my huge disappointment the theater was closed for tours! Ugh! But the Petersen home was open so we walked across the street to tour the home where Lincoln died.

The parlor where Mary Lincoln spent most of the night waiting.

In this bedroom Stanton held meetings, interviewed witnesses, and ordered the pursuit of the assassins.

And this is the bedroom where our wonderful President Lincoln passed away.

We wandered through the wonderful exhibit, taking it all in. They had a replica of the train car that his coffin was carried in, printed news stories of the assassination, tassels and fringe from Lincoln's catafalque, keys and a map belonging to John Wilkes booth, and so much more.

A tower of all books written about Abraham Lincoln!

He is one of my heroes!

A view of Ford's Theater across the street.

We were supposed to meet up with Ashlyn at the mall (she was there with a school group) but because of the massive thunderstorms in the area and the pouring rain, we decided it was time to start our journey home. Oh, how I love these trees...

but I definitely don't miss the traffic!

We were supposed to stay in a hotel that night at the half way point but the kids were so insistent about getting home that we just went for it, pulling into our driveway a little after 1:00 in the morning. I am so grateful that we were able to get back to Maryland for this wonderful trip and hopefully we'll be able to do it again next year!