Here's hoping your Father's Day is filled with as many smiles.

This year, we double dipped on Father’s Day.  We combined our trip to Washington, DC to see my family with a wedding on Sunday of our good friends, who have been dating for the past 7 years!  Let’s just say it was a joyous celebration.

On Sabbath, we made it to my Dad’s house just in time for lunch.  The plans were to eat something light so we would still be hungry for a bar-b-cue in a couple hours that we were hosting.  A few friends and family were coming over just to be together since Jeremy was back from California, and Traci & I were up from NC.  The food was good, but the company was great.  We laughed and joked for about 4 hours on a hot summer afternoon in DC.  After the last person left, we took everything back inside and spent the evening watching a movie in the basement.

The next morning, we got up and pretty much prepared for the wedding at 11:30 AM.  The service was beautiful.  Mike, you are definitely one of a kind.  I can never say I’ve seen the groom come in to the theme from Mission Impossible, and the wedding party recess to the theme from Star Wars.  The reception also was a blast, and was still going after we left at 5 PM to try and catch Ryan (the young man who sang with Ariane at our wedding).  We were able to finally thank him for singing, and then headed for home.

On the way home we made one quick detour, to visit Papa’s Camp. It was a lot of fun to show Traci around the camp, explaining where we would go and what we did while down there every summer.  It just brought back a ton of memories.  Here’s hoping we can create some memories for our children there someday.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!  For this New Years, Traci and I went up to MD for a short weekend.  We got up there Sabbath evening and went directly to Baltimore for the big New Years eve shindig.  We got there around 10pm and listened to a band play till the countdown began.  Then the fireworks began, a full 20 minute show.  It was a really good fireworks show.  Go see it sometime.  Then the next morning we celebrated Christmas with my family in MD.  It made for a wonderful weekend.

Once again, we spent the Christmas holiday in Florida with family.  Christmas day, Traci and I got up and exchanged gifts with her parents.  Then we attended the annual Oms family Christmas Dinner (all 30-some of us).  On the 26th we atteneded the Oms family gift exchange, a more intimate party, with only 20 of us.  Our last day there was my birthday, and my family came out to the Hagele's and joined us for a day of canoeing.  We saw 3 gators, dozens of turtles, and a variety of birds.  Then we returned to the house and had a wonderful cake that Traci made.  Then we had to rush off to the airport to catch our return flight home.  It was a great holidays.

This year, Traci and Lou headed west to attend thanksgiving activities with the Heinrich family.  It was a great weekend filled with laughter, thanksgiving, and lots of food.  While there we also celebrated Grandma's birthday.  It was wonderful to see everyone.  Check out the pictures in the Multimedia section.