Our Big Trip Part Four- EFY-Granville Ohio and our 9th Anniversary!!!

This year LeGrand and I were able to be Session Directors for EFY in Granville Ohio!!! We had a blast!!! It worked out perfectly, Granville is only about 45 minutes from Columbus, so Kirsten and Whitney (bless their hearts) watched Brayden, Adelyn and Sophie all week for us!! Thanks soooooo much guys!! To have 7 kids 7 and under for a week was huge!!! I can't thank you enough for making this possible for us!!! Here we are with most of our Counselors, BC's and Coordinators!! We had an amazing group of Young Single Adults to work with!!! They worked so hard and made it such a memorable week for all the youth that were at our session!!! Thanks guys!!

This isn't my favorite picture, but it was one of the only ones that I have of all 3 of us(LeGrand, Kolby and I) at EFY! Being able to participate in Especially for Youth is such an amazing experience. I've loved EFY ever since I went when I was 16 with Kim Schroeder!! I couldn't get enough of EFY, so I went 2 more years with my beautiful cousin Megan! To be able to go every summer now, with my wonderful husband for a week is one of the major highlights our summers now!! I love being all together as a family, but it's neat to be able to just be with LeGrand. Ok this year was a little different, since Kolby was there, but it was still amazing!!

Kolby was such a trooper!! This was him at one of the dances. He was actually zonked and was right up by the DJ. It was loud, but we were outside and after he got his groove on ;) he crashed and slept through the rest of the dance. It was very nice and I was impressed!!
I love listening to LeGrand teach/speak, but I don't get to do it as often as I would like to. Maybe that's one of the reasons that I love going to EFY with him!! He's amazing!!
Ok, Kolby was probably the most popular guy here this week. The counselors, the participants, every one wanted to hold him....see...
Drew and Kolby...
Art and Kolby...
Ammon and Kolby...
Wow, Kolby's loving all the attention...the only problem was after EFY he thought he needed to be held all the time too...I love holding him, but come on not 24 hours a day!! Here they are trying to act all tough....or cheesy, you pick!!;)
We had so much fun with everyone!! We love you guys!!!
Ok, I would say that the biggest highlight of our week was that we celebrated our 9th Wedding Anniversary on Thursday at EFY!!! It was soooooo memorable... Ok, the story...on Wed. I went back to Columbus to be with our kids and help Whitney and Kirsten...we had a blast, that's when we went to Ballentrae Water Fountains...after we got the kids to bed we had a girls night...I will always remember it. Kirsten, Whitney and I stayed up late writing love notes for LeGrand...I know that sounds funny, and it actually was to see Whitney writing things like "LeGrand you are my Super Man..with a little picture..." anyways, I needed help and we wrote almost 150 "love", "funny", "romantic", "grateful","memory" notes to LeGrand. When I got back to EFY I passed them out to the participants, and had them deliver them to LeGrand through out the day!! It was sooo cute... I wanted to do something for him, but choices were limited being where we were.... He loved it!! When we got back to our hotel, his pockets were over flowing!!! It was fun!!
I wish I had pictures of this...(Megan if you are reading this, please email me the ones that you took for the slide show!! Thanks) LeGrand had worked it all out to have me called up on the stage, in front of everyone, and one person from each company, 16 in all came up holding big poster boards with #1-#16 written on them. Then they did a count down of the top 16 things that LeGrand love about me... I wish I had my camera, and I wish I remembered everything that he wrote, but it was sweet, cute, embarrassing, but most of all really cute!! After we got done with that, LeGrand came up on stage and dipped me and I got a big, fat kiss!! Everyone loved it...especially me;) Thank Honey!!!! I love you!!
Through out the day, so many people came up to say Happy Anniversary, gave us things they had made(see the big #9 with all their names on it) or to give me paper napkin roses that they had made...it was cute, everyone was so thoughtful...I don't think that we will ever be told, "Happy Anniversary" by so many people ever again. (I guess unless we are at EFY celebrating it again.)

Ok, so we got a call from Mikale, telling us that we needed to be back for dinner at 5. When we got to the Cafeteria we saw hundreds and hundreds of paper napkin roses thrown all over the floor, leading up the stairs...we followed the roses, and it was lined with the participants and counselors. When we got up to the top, one of the young men, took Kolby from us, and another one escorted me to our table. It was adorable. Everyone wanted us to have a romantic Anniversary Dinner. The trail of paper flowers lead to a table in the middle of the cafeteria that was set with a table cloth, candles and a bouquet of more paper roses. Drew and Art were our waiters and tried to make our cafeteria dinner look really fancy. It was adorable!! Everyone even tried to watch Kolby so we even had a babysitter. Ok, there's still more, when we got done with our unforgettable, romantic Anniversary dinner, we walked outside, about to head up to the Fireside and they had decorated our limo golf cart. There was a sign on the back that said, "Just Married" and in little print on the bottom it said "9 Years ago", there were streamers and EFY lanyards hanging all over it, with cups held up by the lanyards dragging behind.....it was fun. Thanks everyone for celebrating with us. You guys went all out and it was adorable!! LeGrand, I love you!!! I'm more in love with you now than I was when we got married 9 years ago...and I really loved you then!!! I'm grateful that we get to be together forever!!! You are amazing!!! I love you Honey!!!
9 years down and Eternity to go!!!