Veteran's Assembly

My mother sent me a text a while ago letting me know her neighbor was selling their nice dining room table and asked if I was interested. Sure! I loved our old table, but also didn't. It had cracks (on purpose - wood slats?) that made it difficult to write on and also collected millions of crumb pieces each week. It was also just a well-used table. The neighbor's table was quite new and lovely; so after talking with Ben, I told my mom yes.

Then. . . enter ksl.com's classifieds . . . again. I had decided that I wanted a cruiser bike. Seeing as I ride my bike to school and/or work about five days a week, I thought it would be fun. I had been riding my mountain bike, but wanted a cruiser. :) So I found the perfect one for me on ksl.com - and my always-accommodating dad went and picked it up for me. My dad ended up only paying $35 for it, plus getting brand-new pedals for it from the seller as well. It was a steal. (I saw this same bike on ebay for $499.)

I had finally convinced my parents to come out during the kids' middle school's Veteran's assembly.(They were busy and had a few things going on that week, but made it work for us. Yay!) The school has done a Veteran's assembly for the past 22 years or so and I had heard really good things about it. So, seeing as my dad is a Veteran and that this would be the last year we had two kids at middle school, and as Jonas would be playing in the band, I thought it would be perfect to have my parents attend this with us.

Anyways, long story short: my parents rented a trailer and brought down my goods, plus a lot of great second-hand clothes for everyone! :)

They came in on Thursday afternoon. We brought the new table and chairs all in and set it up. It looked great! I love the black chairs - such a great contrast with all the wood we have (floors, tables, desks, etc.). I posted our old table on facebook and had over a dozen people contact me wanting it! I sold it for full asking-price. Awesome.

On Friday we all attended the assembly. Well, everyone except for Miles. He could have and should have. And now I am kicking myself that I didn't make him. But he was wanting to work on his school work, blahblahblah. Lucy came, Emmy and Jonas were there of course, and Ben was able to get out of work for the hour and attend with us.

Except for the speakers (sorry, so unimpressed), it was really great! Some of the high school's JROTC members did a flag ceremony and some "precision drill" with their guns, etc. It was really cool. The middle school band played a couple songs - including one of all the different military unit's "theme" song. During that, when your theme was played (i.e., the Marine song), if you were a member you were to stand up. That's the coolest part. My dad was one of a half-dozen Marines there. The band played awesome.

Afterwards, the school hosts a reception in the library - with food. It was a fun morning and I was proud of my dad and all the other veterans in our country!

Here we are. Jonas was . . . somewhere else. Miles was at home. :(

Jonas wore his scouting shirt and was able to help out at the reception afterwards.

 My dad pinning a few of the areas that he served in. So cool!

Eating in the school's library. :)

The rest of the time with them was spent visiting, my parents driving to Silverton for an afternoon get-away, and playing Secret Hitler. We'll never forget playing that game with my parents. :) They were hilarious - without meaning to be. Which is sometimes the best way to be hilarious.

It was a wonderful mini-visit from them! They had to head out Saturday morning to get back to some activities at home, while we had to head out to Denver that same morning - more on that in my next post.