Happy Birthday!

I always feel like I should give a shout out to all of my siblings and siblings-in-law and nieces and nephews who have a birthday in April since there are so many of them.  So happy 18th birthday to Spencer today! And happy birthday to Lara and Tim and Mika and Tom and Lauren and McKenzie and Andrew this month!  You rock and I hope your birthdays were filled with awesomeness!

Also since I didn't wish a happy birthday on my blog to those in my family who already had a birthday this year, I also wish Matt and Madeline and Ellie a happy birthday too :)  And since it is almost May, I also wish Nate a happy birthday!  That's all for now :)

My weekend!

I had a lovely weekend filled with...

baseball and...

friends on Friday night and...

preparing for and throwing a surprise 40th birthday party for my awesome sister, Lara, on Saturday!

Food mostly from Costco, which was delicious!   (There are meatballs at one end of the table and Oreo truffles at the other end to round off the meal:)

An awesome cake made by Cami! (A white cake with chocolate ganache on the inside and Oreo frosting on the outside.)

A cool sign made by me.  (I really liked the way it turned out. Cami gave me the idea and I didn't know how it would turn out, so I was pleased when it turned out well.)

This picture is for Lara (since she doesn't like the one above:) (I thought this was a cute picture of both of us. What do you think do Lara and I look anything alike?!)

The birthday party was a success, thanks to Emma for planning most of it, for being persistent that we do it, and for distracting Lara so that we could get things set up.  And thanks to Cami for making the cake and getting the decorations up.  And thanks to Glen for the financial support of the party.

Temple Walk!

On Saturday, the McLean Stake youth walked to the D.C. temple from the Arlington chapel and I walked with them.  It was a total of about 14 miles.  There were over 160 youth that walked and over 200 people that walked in all, that including the adult volunteers.  

It was a really good experience! It was to help us remember the sacrifice that some people have to make to go to the temple. (I will talk about it more at the end of the post.)

At the beginning of the walk, I started talking to one of the young women and we just ended up walking the whole way together.  We talked the whole time, we walked about the same speed, and we encouraged each other when we were getting tired.

The picture above is most of the youth after we had made it to the temple.

I kind of forgot to take more pictures but I did take a few. I liked this tunnel! The group you see ahead in the picture is a group of youth.

This tunnel was a little eerie.  It's part of a trail in Bethesda and when Dana and I got to it we were the only people in it that we could see.  It reminded me of an eerie sci-fi movie or something.

After the eerie tunnel above we ate lunch at this cute little park. Dana nor I never sat down at any of the pit stops knowing that if we sat down, it would be really hard to get back up. 

We walked through some nice neighborhoods. The weather was seriously perfect for the walk.  It was sunny and the temperature was in the low 60s.

If you look close, you can see the temple ahead. This was our first glimpse of the temple and we were super excited! We were still about 2 miles away but we knew we would make it then!

A cool shot of the temple that kind of blends in with the clouds!

Dana and I after we made it to the finish line which was the stake center next to the temple.  (It took us about 5 hours from start to finish.) After everyone made it to the temple, we had a little devotional at the temple visitor's center where the stake president talked about why we did this walk. 

This is what greeted us at the temple!  The tulips were beautiful!

The walk was to help us appreciate that we live so close to a temple and to think about the sacrifice that some people have to make to go to the temple.  Although there are temples all over the world, there are still a lot of people that must save up for years and years and travel so far to get to the temple just once in their life. The stake wanted us to remember that and encouraged the adults to contribute to the temple fund which helps those that live far away from a temple get to there at least once in their lives.

Let the temple be our goal.  The temple is a place of peace and refuge and love. We make covenants and perform ordinances there which will help us return to our Heavenly Father and live with our families forever.  Let us strive to go to the temple as often as we can and be grateful for being so close to one. I love the temple and I am grateful for having a means of getting to the temple in just about 30 minutes!

Cherry Blossoms!

Last Thursday, I took off of work and went to downtown D.C. with my sister, Lara, and three of her kiddos, Emma, Adam, and Ellie to see the cherry blossoms bright and early in the morning. It was a beautiful sunshiny day.  It was a little warm, but it was still lovely! I don't have much to say. Just enjoy the pictures below!

Of course I had get a self-portrait of us all :)

Aren't the blossoms beautiful?!

 I liked the contrast of the dark pink and the light pink.

Einstein, Declaration, John Paul Jones, Tidal Basin

I went downtown with two of my co-workers and friends, C and Heather, on Monday so that we could go to the Einstein statue.  Heather and I have been talking about going for about a year now and we finally got there :)  (I've been there before but Heather had not.)

 Heather, C and I.

As I was researching the best route for our little adventure downtown, I saw this thing that said the Signers of the Declaration of Independence memorial. I had never heard of it and it was right on our path to the tidal basin, so we made a little stop at the memorial.  It was on a cute little island.  

Here's half of the memorial.

Each of the squares had a name of one of the signers and their occupation and where they were from.  I liked the memorial.  I thought it was cool and it was in a beautiful location!

C, Heather and I. Self-portrait.

Tree hugger :) 

John Paul Jones statue.  Man from the Revolutionary War.  I honestly don't remember about him. 

"Surrender? I have not yet begun to fight."

 The non-existent cherry blossoms that should have been blooming by then, but alas were not.

We still walked around the tidal basin despite there not being any cherry blossoms. It's a good walk any way!   FDR memorial.

George Mason memorial.

The only tree that had started blooming.

The sunset.  It was a lovely evening downtown with Heather and C!  It was a little chilly with the wind blowing, but other than that it was a fun adventure!