Great Anniversary

Our 45th anniversary yesterday was one we will always remember . There were two highlights of the day. The first one was a lunch we had with Josie's friend and coworker, Terri Veatch. She is the wonderful person that visited my father's grave in the Netherlands while she was on vacation this summer. Below is a photo of her at lunch yesterday:

We ate at The Cheesecake Factory in Peoria and had a great time and a terrific lunch. Terri described her visit to my father's gravesite with her daughter (who is in the Army and stationed in Belgium) and her granddaughter. Along with many photos which she is having made for me, she did a rub on my father's headstone and presented that to me at the lunch yesterday. This is what it looks like:

As soon as we are able to get a good photo of my father, I will send it to the cemetery and the person who is responsible for caring for his gravesite will attach the photo to the headstone on special days, such as Memorial Day, that honor those troops who are buried there. I will have to find a way to duplicate this "rub" for my brother, George. I presented a nice gift to her for her effort to fill in this gap in my life. It was an emotional lunch, and very rewarding to me.

Following lunch, Josie and I went to a Ford dealer - Surprise Ford - to look at a vehicle I had seen advertised online. We have been discussing adding another vehicle so that Josie could economically commute to work without adding more mileage to our truck. We have 18,000 + miles on the truck since we purchased it in December. That is way too much mileage, and I am also concerned because of the problems we have had so far with the vehicle. We got an excellent deal on a 2015 Ford Escape, pictured below:

The car has only 12,000 miles on it, and the Sales Manager gave us a particularly good deal since it was the first car sold by the dealership for the day.

What a memorable anniversary...