Anniversary trips and family fun.

Joel and I celebrated our tenth anniversary on June 28. It is hard to believe that an entire decade has passed since that beautiful day when we were married in Faith Community Church. The week before our actual anniversary, Joel and I took a trip to Niagara Falls.

We had always planned to go on a trip to celebrate this first "big" anniversary. Years ago we thought we might go to Hawaii, but after having several kids we realised that was too far away and far too expensive. Maybe for our 30th anniversary instead!

We are so thankful for Joel's parents and his brother Norm and his wife Trish for watching the kids for us. They all had a wonderful time. Rachael and Benny got to attend VBS all week, chase chickens, gather eggs and go to the Y for a swim. Nate and Jeremiah loved swimming every day, visiting with their cousins and playing ball with Pop-pop. They also went to McDonalds and the Dairy Queen. Elijah did a great job, I was worried about him, but he didn't even cry at night.

Joel and I were amazed at God's awesome power on display all week. From the gorgeous mountains we traveled thru on the way up, the very powerful thunderstorm that forced us to pull over and wait it out, and of course the rush and roar of the mighty waters. It was truly impossible to not worship God when we were witness to such beauty. (and I hate thunderstorms-but I know I am safe in the car!).

We stayed in a beautiful hotel with a nice indoor pool and fancy resturant ( a bit too fancy for our pocketbooks, but the buffet breakfast, with a view of the falls from 33 stories up was wonderful). The bed was truly the most comfy I have ever slept in, I wanted to bring it home with us!

We did all the fun touristy things, like the Maid of the Mist boat ride, which was my favorite, the Behind the Falls tour, Joel's favorite and the Skylon tower- it is 83? stories tall. Joel had his binoculars and we spent a long time up there looking at God's earth. But this was not the highlight of our trip. What we loved most was just spending time together. We loved being Dani and Joel for a whole week, not just Mommy and Daddy. Walking around holding each others hands instead of small sticky hands, eating dinner at eight o'clock in the evening and then going out after that, sipping starbucks coffee when we finally rolled out of bed at the crack of noon! It was so refreshing and so needed. We got asked if we were newlyweds a few times!! No, it just felt kind of like that. I think we appreciated this trip more than our Honeymoon. As much as we love and cherish and are thankful for our children, it is nice to remember what made us want to marry and start this family in the first place. Thank You Savior for our marriage. We don't deserve to be mistaken for newlyweds, in fact in light of all the sinning we do in this marriage we know it is only God's grace that has held us together and allowed our love to grow- newlyweds don't know what love is! And I hope that by God's grace I will feel the same way about decaders when Joel and I are celebrating twenty and thirty and forty years of marriage.

Family Vacation

We spent the week of June 8-16 on our family vacation. It was a wonderful family time. We were able to leave a day earlier because my friend Bonnie watched all the kids for me! And they were rowdy that day (her kids first day of vacation from school) but I was able to clean and pack up everything so that when Joel came home all he had to do is change and load up the cartop carrier.

I wouldn't call vacation relaxing at all- impossible with five kids eight and under to care for, but we did have fun. We spent three days on the beach and all the kids except Elijah loved the water. Eli was so disgusted if the waves hit his toes! It was so funny to watch him. He was able to go on a few baby rides this year, and had the usual hissy fit when we had to get him off. Jeremiah wanted to ride the big viking ship and I went with him. I can't handle those rides anymore and it was a bit too scary for Jeremiah also. I had a death grip on him, I was scared he would flip right out of the seat (we sat way in the back) . He said we wont do that again till he is much bigger!

We found a neat playground in Bethany Beach and enjoyed a huge bucket of beach fries with vinegar on them. The kids devoured them, Elijah ate them with two hands! Healthy lunch huh! We had a nice campfire a few nights and went for a few walks. We only went to Dairy Queen once, which is probably the minimum ever on our vacation. All in all , we had a nice time.