5 years later

Here Jer and I (Sporting the horiz stripes) pose on our 5th anniversary. These 5 years have gone by so fast for me. I remember once sitting next to the canal in Seneca Falls with Jer. We knew no one in the whole town. It is a very cold, economically depressed, and socially isolated area. We moved there inorder to be able to complete our respective graduate schools, and we each had an hour commute through the snow belt. We were talking about how depressing it would be to move there without one another, but since we were together it was wonderful. I have beautiful memories of that year even though we were poor, and I was a terrible cook (even the sister missionaries didn't want to come over for dinner).
Wherever Jer is, that is where I want to be. It has been like that since I first met him. I know that I will be happy.



SUMMER VISITORS:
We have been very blessed to have lots of visitors this summer. Here are some of the pics
James, Maddie, Rachelle, and Anthony
Luca and Arianna played wonderfully together. They measured Dinosaur footprints and searched for fossils at the science center.






Aaron, Ashley, Clarissa, Luca, and James
Tommy with 3 friends came down to barbeque before an orioles game
I went to M-burg to "babysit". I had a wonderful time being with my little sis. Here we make a fire and roast marshmellows.

Here we are in Duck NC. Jer dares to enter the sunlight to dig a hole with Luca.

Happy anniversary Joanie

This is a revolutionary armband that I sometimes like to wear so that I don't forget that our anniversary is on July 26. Even now, five years later, I still have to look in the dictionary in order to correctly spell the word 'marriage'. (Do we still have the 5oo announcements I made to let people know about our impending 'marraige'?) As we got to know each other we found out that our unique strengths complement eachother to form a more perfect whole (for example, we found that I'm smarter and she's a faster swimmer: In a biathlon relay involving aquatics and verbose prognostication we would do quite well.) Luckily, I proposed before they changed the meatball recipe at Wegmans (Note to Wegmans: The post 2002 meatballs are a tad heavy on the garlic - actually more than a tad I'd say). We had a wonderful wedding and festivities (Joanie: next time you get married and have a wedding reception on a military base try to remember to have proper ID so as to be admitted to the party.)We moved to Seneca Falls, NY (The birthplace of both Womens' rights and the Mormon Church???) Where we lived for one year in the old Third Ward School building (no insulation in the walls or ceiling). Then we moved back to Ithaca for two years where Luca was born ('naturally', thanks to that area's general cultural proclivity toward eating too much granola). The fact that Luca had the same pediatrician that was present at my birth caused me to have a great epiphany that moving away from my birth city might be healthy (the full course of said epiphany taking 9 months to play itself out - I'm sorry joanie) . This landed us in Baltimore Maryland where James was born (Joanie, Where would you like to have our next baby be born?) I can say with confidence that these last five years have included the four best years of my life.