30 Years- Love my Parents

On February 18, 1983 my parents were married and sealed in the Logan Temple for all time and eternity, and they are still married and sealed today!!  I have been wanting to write a special blog post on their behalf because 30 years is a long time to be married to someone, and I am one lucky girl to be their first born!!  My mother was only 19 years old and my father was 22 when they got married! They were young, and the stories they tell me about their dating days -- like when my mom dumped frosty on my dad's car when they were "broken up" for a time-- are pretty funny!  I'm glad that break up didn't last long because now I have two wonderful parents!!

This picture is their engagement picture!!  My mom was beautiful! (She still is)!  My dad had that perfect little mustache he has had off and on throughout my life!!

The evening my parents got married was cold and snowy.  They did not get any pictures in front of the Logan Temple.  This picture is from their reception.  (I remember when I was growing up I loved to put my mom's wedding dress on.  I always wanted to follow her example and have a modest wedding dress and get married in the Temple).



For their anniversary this year I wanted to do something special!  I would have thrown them a party, but given that I live many miles away that was not going to work!  Instead, I had my brother, Jason, scan and send the above picture to me.  I then found a picture of the Logan Temple.  I worked really hard on the picture below by editing and such.  Then, I ordered a picture on glass for them.  I haven't seen the final product because I had it shipped directly to their house!  I hope it turned out as well as I wanted it to!

(Disclaimer- This may not be the actual picture I sent to get printed on glass.  Like I said, I had tons of edits, and emailed my siblings for their opinions on the best one.  Now that it is a couple months later, I don't know exactly which one I submitted, but it was the best)!!

 

Now 30 years later (well, 29.5 years when the picture was taken) here my parents are in front of the Logan Temple again.



And they are still happily married!!!!

Since that cold blizzard day 30 years ago, their little family of 2 has grown to 14, and 2 more are coming around August 4!

So, after they got married, they had their little Missy (me), their first born!  I wanted to put a family picture up of the three of us when I was a newborn, but again I am many miles away and don't have access to a picture like that right now!  I do, however, have a picture of the three of us when Josh and I went to England with them!



After me they had Tina, Benji, Jason, and Aaron!!  5 kids altogether!



As the years continued to fly by, their family grew and grew!  Tina married Brant, I married Josh, and Benji married Kayla- adding 2 sons in law and a daughter in law!  Tina and Brant had three very cute, very energetic little boys- Christopher, Caleb, and Derrik, and are expecting their first baby girl this summer!  Josh and I had little sweet Payson, and Benji and Kayla are expecting their first baby (also a girl) this summer!  That makes 4 grandsons and 2 granddaughters on the way!!

Grandma and her Grandbabies



I know that being married is not always the easiest thing in the world, but I am sure thankful that my parents stuck it out because now look at their beautiful growing family!!

 

 

 

 

 

A little Easter Vacation

Did you know in Illinois Good Friday is a paid holiday?? That means Josh did not have to work! We had airline credit, so we took a trip! We didn't want to spend a lot of our own money so we had to go somewhere where our credit would cover most of the cost. We decided to go to Atlanta, Georgia. We really wanted to go to the beach so even though we flew to Atlanta we drove four hours to the coast to spend most if our vacation.

First we went to Congaree National Park! Our hike was a board walk over the swamp to a lake and then we took a fisherman's trail back where we crossed a stream!

We went to Pinckney Plantation! It was free, so naturally not as cool as we hoped, but the flowers were pretty!

We spent some time at Fort Moultrie in Mt Pleasant, SC. It is an awesome fort. It was used for about 200 years starting with the Revolutionary War clear to the World War II. The fort shows all of the different things that it was used for during the 200 years. Plus it is right on the coast so it is a very cool fort! The houses in Mt. Pleasant were so cool! The yellow one that I have a picture of is where Josh and I are going to live with our family when Josh becomes city manager of Mount Pleasant.

We also went to Charleston. It looked a lot more crowded than we anticipated, but the houses on the battery were really awesome. They were big mansions right next to each other with no room in between except for a little bit. I don't think I would want to live there because if I had enough money to own a mansion I would want my own land. Nonetheless, the houses were pretty neat!

Our main destination was Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. Josh got a good deal on Omni resort because they were under construction. The weather was not as hot as we were hoping. It was only high 60s so it was pretty cold to swim in the ocean. Payson love the ocean so we let him wade his feet. If we let him he probably would have gone all the way in.

Easter Sunday we went to church, had a nice brunch at a breakfast restaurant, and went for a nice walk along the beach. At our breakfast lunch there was a lot of people dressed up for Easter like it was a tradition for them to go out to brunch for Easter. We also enjoyed some delightful seafood that evening and watch the sunset over some big yachts. We enjoyed the best dessert ever- chocolate molten cake with ice cream during the sunset.

Our last day we went just to Savannah, Georgia. We went to a seafood place that had alligators to look at. Our dinner lunch was all shell fish and crab legs, so we had to crack our own food. It took forever to eat and it was hard with a restless little one year old! In Savannah we saw Forsyth Park and the fountain and the beautiful flowers there, and we drove by some Victorian houses.

We were going to do a dolphin tour but because our shellfish dinner took so long we missed the 4 o'clock tour and decided the 6 o'clock was too late since we had to drive back to Atlanta to catch a flight in the morning. Instead we went to the beach one last time. It was warmer the last day, so we waded our feet again and took cute pictures of Payson in his shorts!

The vacation went by too fast. It was fun to be with Josh all day, and it was fun to be in warmer weather.