Hawaii 5-0

Today was a bit of a surprise celebration for Nana and Ye-Ye, who are approaching their fiftieth anniversary.  They were under the assumption that it was a Fourth of July luau, but in fact, Aunt Shain was decorating the house with all sorts of decorations, and hundreds of photos from over the years.

That's one of the things we were doing yesterday, bringing the photos down there that were printed.  This week, we've been scanning quite a bit.  But you can see the different poster boards that were made, each one with a whole lot of pictures attached to it.  Nana and Ye-Ye walked in the front door, and stopped one by one at all the presentations, the whole family in tow.

At the end of it all, they get to keep the pictures, of course.  But we'll post a lot of them online too, perhaps closer to their anniversary date itself, which is later this week.  There are also a few other surprises coming up as well...

In the meantime, today was a day to celebrate our parents/grandparents, and we did so with a gift that they treasure most of all:  with time together.  You can see the special table set up for them, and yes, there was plenty of food available, all cooked up by David Austen and Jonathan on the grill.

It was a nice afternoon together, all of us together talking about various things, from past photos to current plans for trips.  There were gifts, and just a nice casual time together.

The rest of the day was fairly routine, of course starting with church online.  One of the things we usually include with every week's message is a coloring sheet that you can download, one related to the video we're showing.  This week we were showing our "Heroes" video that we made a few years ago for Summer Xtreme, and so Camille made this coloring sheet related to the SX Heroes.  Madison colored it in right away:

We slept in somewhat, this due to the late night last night with fireworks and so forth.  But we slept well, and we had a quick breakfast, and made some last-minute plans before heading over to the party.

Afterwards, we did a little yard work, and a little piano.  Madison signed up for some leadership classes with taekwondo today.  Our movie tonight was "The Resurrection of Gavin Stone," which Mommy and I saw a few years ago, and enjoyed.  The tie-in was that the main actor in this is the guy who plays Grant Ward on "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D."  While we wait for season three to arrive, I thought it might be fun to watch the actor in this other movie, which Madison enjoyed.

I did too.  It's a nice movie, completely underrated.  It gently pokes fun at some aspects of church, with some genuine themes of grace and of course learning humility.

Tonight after movie time, we were all pretty wiped out, so it was time for bed.  We got ready, and then we finished reading "Truckers," which went over really well.  I've read it before, but the girls really enjoyed this first book of "The Bromeliad Trilogy."  It's warm, funny, and it's a fun story that moves along well, also poking fun at life in a way that only Terry Pratchett can.  We'll have to see tomorrow night what the girls want to hear next - they might want to hear the next part, or it might be another book.  We'll see!

Anyway, we said our prayers, and not long after that, we were asleep a little earlier tonight.  It was a full and wonderful weekend though!