My Mom and Dad's Week Long 40th Anniversary Celebration

It seems that some of the best weeks of your life just fly by, which is exactly how this last week has been.  In a few months on October 23rd, my parents will be celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary.  Of course 40 years is quite an accomplishment especially for my large family of 8 children, and therefore, we decided as a family to take a whole week together here in Utah to celebrate 40 years of a wonderful marriage.  I wish I had pictures for everything we did this week, but I sometimes forgot I had a camera.  So, I'll do my best to explain everything I experienced.

On Saturday, July 24th (Pioneer Day), Adam and Chanda's family, Angela and Russell's family, Jeremy, and Mom and Dad arrived from Kansas.  I had just gotten done with EFY and came up to my brother, Jonathan's house.  We then had the wonderful opportunity to go to the home of my Uncle David (my Dad's older brother), who graciously planned a little family reunion.  It was wonderful to see my Dad's side of the family after so many years.  But . . . I did forget to bring my camera and don't have pictures, but it was a great evening.

On Sunday, I went to Jonathan and Erica's ward for church.  Before church, I went to choir practice, because Jonathan is the ward choir director and he was working on my arrangement of I Need Thee Every Hour.  He has a wonderful ward choir and I was so glad to be there as they worked on it.

In the evening, Alena and Mike had a wonderful dinner prepared for the family of homeade pizza, breadsticks, fruit, salad, and a delightful dessert of creme filled cupcakes with choices of chocolate ganash or whipped cream. 

 

After Dinner, Alena then showed movie clips that remind her of our family. 

The most enjoyable ones for me to watch was the dinner scene from "While You Were Sleeping" and a scene from "Funny Girl" where Fanny Bryce poses as a pregnant woman in a production of the Ziegfield Follies and They were hilarious.  Thanks Alena and Mike for a pleasant evening.

On Monday, we all went to the Salt Lake Cemetery to view the graves on both my Mom and Dad's sides.  It was a wonderful experience to talk to my parents and families about those relatives dear to them that have passed away.

This is my Mom in front of her Grandma Asbury's grave.  I never knew her.

In both the pictures on the left and right, that's the grave for Grandma and Grandpa Bruderer.  Grandpa Bruderer is still alive, but my dear Grandma "Flower" Bruderer passed away a few years ago.  My mom is so much like her in many wonderful ways.

On the left: This is Dad with Courtland (my nephew) standing behind the grave of his father, who Courtland was named after.

On the right: These are the graves of my Great Uncle, Mark E. Peterson, who was also an apostle and his wife.  He played a huge role in raising my father after his own father passed away.

 

On the left: This is my father standing behind the graves of his Grandma and Grandpa Peterson.

On the right: This is me standing in front of President Gordon B. Hinckley's grave.  He's the prophet I've known for most of my life.

On the right and below is  my grave!Yes, it's already in place for me to die.  After all, we all must die someday, and my parents and I thought we should prepare now and buy a gravestone.  Morbid thought . ..  hmm . . . but actually, the grave says I was born in the 1700s.  Odd, huh?  Well, actually,  this is the grave of the pioneer, Jared Starr, who I was named after. I must say it is a little bit disconcerting to find your name on a gravestone, but hey . .. I'm not afraid to die. :)

 You know?  My mom's always been young at heart.  In the picture on the right, you can see why.  While we were at the cemetery, the sprinklers were all on and my Mom loved getting wet along with all the grandchildren.  I thought it was so cute, that I had to take a picture.

As we were walking around the cemetery we also saw an amazing grave for a boy who had died young and had been in a wheelchair.   This gravestone was such a wonderful reminder of no matter how many disabilities one has they will be free from them after this life and reach their fullest potential.



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After the cemetery, we all headed over to Temple Square to walk around and take in the place that my dear parents got married 40 years ago.

We started at the doors of the temple and attempted to get a picture with Mom and Dad and the grandchildren that were there.  As you can see, it was quite a challenging endeavor keeping Lily and Evan still.  Unfortunately, you can't see Lily behind Maddy, but it is still an adorable picture. 

Of course, as I stood at the steps of the Salt Lake Temple . . . . .

I started dreaming of the day I would walk down steps like those with my eternal companion.

As you can see in the left picture my eternal companion is quite beautiful. . . . and . . . um . . . she's made of air.  I can just hope that someday my eternal companion will not be made of air, but at this moment in this picture it didn't seem to matter.

Another unique feature of temple square is of course, the tabernacle where General Conference used to be held.
Because of it's dome shape, the acoustics are especially good, making it an ideal space for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to record their CD's.  I went inside with some of my nieces and nephews and we actually ran into two guys that had previously served their missions in Kansas.  After that, I also ran into one of my EFY kids from the week before named Brandon McCown.  I made it a point to introduce him to my niece, Ariel, who is his age.  I think that is one of the reasons Ariel started getting interested in going to EFY next year. 

Another cool feature about temple square is the Visitor's Centers.  One of my favorite things in the South Visitor's Center is the statue of Christ.  I love seeing it in person being reminded of my Savior and all he's done for me.  In the picture on the left, in the same visitor's center, here are the two boy babies, Sam and Neal, who are sons of my sisters, Angela and Alena.  It was great to see them together throughout the week knowing that they will play more together when they're older.

 At the end of the temple square extravaganza, I had the awesome opportunity to go with Adam and Chanda's family to the Conference Center to take a tour.  It was absolutely beautiful.  This is a picture of us on the roof.

After a long day at Temple Square Adam and Chanda made a great Mexican dinner of Fajitas.  Following the dinner, their family gave Mom and Dad a new and improved DVD of many of the family movies made throughout the years.  It was great watching so many of the movies and reminiscing of the many hilarious moments, touching experiences, and life-changing events that have occurred in our family.
 On Tuesday, we went as a family to a place called Gardner Village with lots of little shops.  Almost everything in all the shops were way out of my poor college student price range, but it was fun to look around anyway.  

 My favorite part had to be the candy store called Sweet Afton's where I bought an assortment of fudge and a large, homemade peanut butter cup.  I waited until the next Sunday, which was Fast Sunday, to eat them and I learned very quickly that eating incredibly rich candy after fasting is not always a great idea, because I had quite a headache Sunday night.

In the evening, we celebrated Evan's second birthday, by eating amazing food with the movie, "Cars" as the theme. . . and to make the experience even more exciting for Evan, the fire department showed up at Jonathan and Erica's house, because somebody saw smoke coming from the grill that Jonathan was grilling hamburgers on and thought the house was on fire.  Of course it wasn't, but Evan was able to see a real firetruck, which was the perfect birthday present.

After dinner, Jonathan and Erica gave this amazing picture of the 

Salt Lake City Temple to Mom and Dad.  I look forward to seeing it hung up at home in Kansas when I come back for Thanksgiving.

 On Wednesday, I went with part of the family to a English Bakery where I delighted in a meal of crumpets, cheese biscuits, and a delicious sausage roll.  It was very good.  I never had eaten a crumpet before and it turned out to be very good.  It tastes like a glorified English Muffin.

Here's the whole crew at the bakery

At the store next to the bakery, Lily, was ready to go shopping and grabbed on to the children-sized carts.  Luckily, she didn't buy anything, because everything in the store was way overpriced.  Isn't she adorable.

 
After the bakery, we all went to Liberty Park where Dad said he would play at when he was younger, because his house was only a few blocks away.  He said he even caught his first fish there.  In the right picture you can see that Lily really enjoyed being pushed by her cousin, Ariel in the swing.

While at Liberty Park we noticed that they had a carousel and because I was feeling a little sick I didn't go on it, but it was fun to see the others go on it.

My mom is definitely a kid at heart.

I think this was Sam's first time on a carousel and  Neal's first time too.

There's nothing like watching all your nieces and nephews together on a carousel.  It makes me excited for the day when I will have children of my own.

In the evening, we went together as a family up to the canyon and cooked tin foil dinners, which was hosted by Angela and Russell.  They were excellent and to top it all off we had Smores and dutch oven peach cobbler for dessert.

Right next to the campsite there was a rock face that I was able to climb up.  It was really fun and I found out that I'm not afraid of heights and that I'm not a horrible climber either.  Unfortunately, I don't have a picture, but believe me, I'm telling the truth.

After we all ate, we played charades acting out different memories of our family life growing up.  It was hilarious to see everybody act out their part.

On Thursday, we went to a water park called Raging Waters.  I purposely didn't bring my camera, because I didn't want it to be stolen.  So, I don't have any pictures of my muscular self with my shirt off, but here are some pictures I found of the park.

One of the best parts of the park for the grandchildren was the wave pool.  In this pool, every 15 minutes, actual waves were generated so that it felt like you were at the ocean catching waves.  It was fun to see all my nieces and nephews run into the waves along with my mom playing in the waves with them.

The slide on the left is the slide I'm talking about.

Along with the wave pool there were about 10 huge slides to go down at the water park.  I loved all of them, but I seemed to have issues with one specific one.  One of the slides was shaped like a roller coaster with one big drop that dipped down and then came right up again to do another big drop.  I went on this slide 3 times and 2 out of the 3 times I got to the top of the second drop, I got stuck and I had to push my away a few inches with my arms before I was able to go down the second big drop.  It was quite embarrassing, but quite memorable.
After 5 hours in the sun at Raging Waters, it didn't occur to me to reapply sunscreen during that time, which would make the rest of the week quite miserable for me.  I got severely burned on my shoulders.

After Raging Waters, we were all exhausted, and I started feel sick, but we still had a nice simple dinner by Jacob and Tonya of beef turnovers, which were very good, and I was relieved to go to bed.

On Friday, I was relieved to wake up feeling a whole lot better than I had the night before.  Therefore, I was able to go with my brothers, nephews, and brothers-in-law to play a game of football.  Almost every single person got a touchdown during the course of the game and it turned out to be a rewarding experience.

 I must admit though that touch football hurts a lot when your shoulders are severely sunburned.






After our game of football the whole family ordered food from two wonderful places:

         AND

Jared, Adam, and Ariel eating heavenly Cafe Rio salads

Courtland and Bryant eating real man burgers from Five Guys

As you can see from the pictures above, we thoroughly enjoyed the food.

BUT . .. . 

Just in case everybody wasn't full enough Amman and I spend the whole afternoon cooking a German dinner.

About 2 years ago, right after I got off my mission, Amman and I made a German meal for Jonathan and Erica's family and Alena and Mike.  The pictures above is from that experience, but this time we had to make enough food to feed over 20 people.

I spend many hours breading and frying schnitzel, which normally wouldn't be too bad, but since I was quite severely sunburned, my body was getting unusually warm, but I was glad to do it and also spend the time with my wonderful brother Amman.  After all, how often to you have a brother that served his mission in the same place as you?

 

While I was frying over 20 schnitzels, Amman was preparing the Apple Strudel for dessert.  In order to have enough apples, we both had to peel and cut over 7 pounds of apples.  It was quite a process, but boy, did the strudel turn out.

Pictured below are other things we had to eat such as spaetzle, goulash, and a spinach blueberry salad with poppyseed dressing, which Amman liked to call poopyseed dressing.

Needless to say, the food turned out all very good and even though I wanted to cut off my feet at the end from standing for over 4 hours, it was most definitely worth it.

After dinner, Amman and I gave our anniversary gifts to Mom and Dad.   

I started out with three lists of 40: 40 Movies That Remind Me of Mom and Dad, 40 Book of Mormon Scriptures That Remind Me of Mom and Dad, and 40 Songs That Remind Me of Mom and Dad. 

I even included CD's with the songs that remind me of Mom and Dad.

Amman then read a poem that he wrote for Mom and Dad's anniversary, which was hilarious and creative.  Along with that he gave a unique kaleidoscope to them.

After that, we had a short game night where I was able to play a game named Gloom with Jacob, Tonya, and Erica.

In many ways, this was a disturbing game, but it turned out to be a really fun game and I enjoyed it thoroughly.  Erica ended up winning the game.

On Saturday, we started out the day with Britta, my cousin, Scott's wife, take pictures of our family.  Even though we thought it mind turn out to be a nightmare, the pictures turned out pretty darn well.  To see the pictures you can go to the link below:

http://bbphotography.instaproofs.com/enterEvent.php?id=258198

After pictures, all the grandchildren were left at home and babysat by other relatives and friends, while just my brothers, sisters, my parents, my in-laws and I went to a session at the Salt Lake City Temple.  It definitely ended up being the highlight of the week.  I will never forget that wonderful experience of having us all together in the Celestial room of the Salt Lake Temple.

Here we are after the temple session.

Here are my wonderful parents in the place where it all started 40 years ago.

  This is what it is all about.  Having your family sealed for time and all eternity.  We will be able to be together forever, which will be such a wonderful thing.  Even though we are not perfect and we have our disagreements, we still love each other and love our father in heaven and savior, Jesus Christ, and desire to come unto him.  In such a world as the one we live in, I am just grateful I was born into such a family.

After going to the temple, we went to a restaurant called Buca di Beppo where we were joined by Grandpa Bruderer, Ariel, Sam, and Neal.  Ariel graciously babysat Sam while we were in the temple session.  Thanks Ariel for doing that.

Buca di Beppo is an Italian restaurant and has very good food.  We sat at a very long table as you can see and got to sample a large variety of Italian foods.  It was delightful, I tell ya.

Well, as Saturday came to an end so did our celebration.  I was sad for it all to end so soon, but I can say that it was a week I will cherish.  One thing I would like to mention is that the week would not have been nearly as wonderful if it weren't for Jonathan and Erica and Alena and Mike's hospitality.  They provided housing for the whole family and were incredibly generous.  Thank you Jonathan and Erica and Alena and Mike for making the week so special.  It wouldn't have been the same without you. 

Also, as a final note, I hope my Mom and Dad know how much I love them and appreciate the wonderful life they've given to me.  HAPPY 40th WEDDING ANNIVERSARY!