Happy Birthday, Peter!

A lot of things took place on July 17th, 1989.  1st test flight of the U.S. Stealth Bomber, the grand opening of Splash Mountain in Disneyland, Paul McCartney releases his single This One, but none of these were more important than when Peter McQuade Barnes decided to join the general population and make the world smile a bit. 

But he still had to work.

Peter is still working the second shift at Purina which is great for our bank account, but difficult for our scheduling.  I wanted to plan all these fun things for his birthday, but when one works until 10:30 at night, a lot of those plans didn't seem likely to happen.  So I decided to spread it out through the 17th (opening presents) and the 18th (enjoying cake).  

Murphy treated Peter. 

He only acted like he hated it.  He really does love his dog.

Wife spoiled Peter.

His traditional peach cobbler didn't turn out, so I had to go with Plan B.

I'm so grateful this goof was born!  Before I met him my life was good, but he made it even better.

Museums, Friends, Fireworks, and Food!

I was excited to find out that Peter was going to have the 4th of July off of work, but I was even more excited to find out that he had the 3rd off as well.  I tried to plan something fun for us to do on this extended weekend he received. But thankfully, some friends from the ward beat us to the punch and invited us to various activities to celebrate our beautiful nation's birthday.

First, our new friends, Lindsey and Darren Saunders, had some extra tickets to the Putnam Museum of History and Natural Sciences and invited us to join them.  Seeing as I had nothing planned just yet, we decided to take accept their offer.

Lindsey and Darren have a sweet little girl that they brought along and required a bit of attention, so while they were entertaining her, we entertained ourselves.

The Socibot.  He was suppose to predict our ages and temperaments just by looking at us.  Not very accurate most of the time. 

 Peter preaching on a random podium.

It was a very fun day and we're grateful to the Saunders family for thinking of us for this outing.

The next day was the 4th of July and another family in the ward was having a big ward 4th of July barbecue.  I hadn't planned anything for the 4th of July either, so we agreed to go (normally I would have something planned for long weekends.  Don't know why I didn't this time.)  I didn't take many pictures of the actual dinner part, but I did manage to get some of the men in the group playing soccer, Peter included.

Asking the neighbors for the ball back.  

We later decided to go see what fireworks Davenport has to offer and, for some reason, I was curious to see how Murphy would react to fireworks (Dumb and twisted, I know).  It was so crowded downtown, we didn't manage to actually park and watch them, but we enjoyed driving around and seeing all the different fireworks while poor Murphy laid at my feet, anxiously waiting for us to go back home.

All in all, it was a good day.  After all the contention that is going on in our country, it's nice to have a day to put our differences aside and just be grateful for a country that lets us agree to disagree, that allows us to believe what we want (even if that doesn't seem like the case from time to time), and that reminds us of all the men and women who fought and died protecting that sacred gift we have been given- Freedom.

I don't know what lies ahead for us as a country, but I do know that I am proud to be an American.  And I know that will never change.