Special Birthday

As you know we were blessed to have 3 extra days with Daniel so that enabled us to spend his 35th birthday with him. Daniel had a friend take him smallmouth bass fishing on the Susquehanna River on Friday. Daniel was so excited for this trip and went out the night before and bought all kinds of specialty lures for smallmouth bass. Of course it ended up that the only fish they caught were with live bait. Go figure!

He got home late afternoon. We had planned to take the kids to Hershey Park on Friday after school. We had received tickets to Hershey Park for our whole family as a gift this summer. We had not been able to work it into our busy summer schedule and the tickets expire next weekend. Of course, Friday after school was raining. We knew Saturday would be a full day with getting Daniel all packed and ready but it WAS his birthday so we decided we had to give it a shot.

Saturday morning was raining too so we tried to get things done around the house. It began to clear up slightly so we loaded in the car around 12:00pm and headed to the National Guard Base about 40 minutes away. Daniel had a few last minute things he needed from the base store. After that we stopped for lunch and ate in the car as we headed to Hershey Park. We spent from 2:30 - 6 pm at the park. It was quite a bit more crowded than I would expect for a very cloudy day in September. We first split up and I took Ainsley on some kiddie rides while Daniel took the boys to do some bigger rides. While the boys were off on their own, Daniel and the boys tried the giant sledge hammer to see how strong they were. I guess each of the small boys got one turn and Daniel took two swings. He thinks he's strong or something. :)Well, he ended up winning Ainsley a monkey. She couldn't have been more happy. We met up later and tried to find some things we could all do together. One of the favorites (not if you ask the kids) was the Flying Falcon. You are in small cage-like car. It spins the cars around in a circle while the cars rock back and forth because they are dangling from the top of the car. Then it moves you up a huge tower while it continues to spin and rock. Daniel took Ainsley, I took MacGregor and Chase rode on his own. Everyone seemed to be enjoying the spinning and rocking until we rose 100 feet in the air. Chase's face quickly became a nervous almost panicked look. MacGregor said he felt like he was going to fall out and Daniel said Ainsley became quite unsettled. Everyone survived and we moved on to the Kissing Tower. Here are some pictures before the ride started.

The Kissing Tower is about as safe a ride as they come. Everyone could sit and enjoy the airconditioning. The Kissing Tower is sort of like a donut around a stick. Although this donut has large shaped chocolate kiss windows all around. Everyone sits on benches and looks out the big windows to see the view. The "donut" spins around the stick once you are at the top so you can see all of Hershey PA while they talk about the different points of interest. Kissing is encouraged. Here are some pictures from the top.

I'm not sure who took these pictures or how they got on our camera, cuz we were too busy MAKING OUT! I love the Kissing Tower!

Here are a few more pictures of our day:

We headed home for dinner. My parents were meeting us at the house for a mini party. We had a nice dinner. The cake was delicious. It was provided by the Bishop earlier that morning. The Bishop stopped by around 11am to wish Daniel a Happy Birthday. He delivered 3 cards for Daniel from the Young Men and a Maggie Moos Ice Cream Cake. I was glad not to have to worry about getting a cake made on such a busy day. Daniel then opened a few presents.

The kids and I gave him a new journal to take to Iraq, the Old Testament Student Manual, which he said is too big and heavy so he couldn't take it. I guess I 'll be studying at home. A Bass T-Shirt that says something like Lakes, Lures and Lunkers - Welcome to My World! and a head lamp. It's for night fishing but doctors often use them when doing surgery. It might come in handy over there. The rest of the night we packed and went over paper work. We didn't get to bed til about 1am. We talked til about 1:30 or so and then ofcourse this pregnant body needed to go to the bathroom at 3:30am. The alarm went off at 5:30am so we could get to the airport on time. What a long day and short night! I wouldn't trade it though. It was a wonderful way to spend Daniel's birthday and our last day together! I love you Baby - Happy Birthday!

Oh - I'll tell about the family album in the next post!