Thank You For Serving and God Bless America

I have been blogging for just over four years. I feel sort of sad that I didn't start earlier and have that picture history for the older girls. 

However, the older girls have many more memories of trips, outings, play groups and things that the younger girls missed out on due to divorce and me being a single mom since they were too young to remember anything differently.

Due to that, I thought about what I wanted to post today and it was about how grateful I am to the service men and women who have done so much for our country and many others around the world. 


I even have "Freedom" in my email address as I feel so strongly about our freedom and our ability to worship as we do and to have the blessings of our nation when I have traveled to many other nations in my life and have witnessed the struggles that come when there isn't complete freedom.

One of my older brothers has been in the military since I was still in high school. He joined ROTC when I was in middle school and continued on from there. 
 
He is so patriotic that his son is named Abraham Lincoln and weirdly enough, he looks like Abraham Lincoln and his birthday is on the fourth of July. 

That will tell you how patriotic my brother is.... 

All my girls have danced at the fourth celebration over the years and I never posted about Princess Three dancing since it was before I blogged. 

As I was looking for pictures of my brother at the celebration, as he has been in it twice that I know, I found these cute pictures of Princess Three looking so young dancing one of her first years on the dance team. 


I thought it was so cute now that all the girls have danced at one of the celebrations. I wish I had digital pictures of the older girls dancing there but I don't. I need to scan more of our pictures so I can use them on this blog. 

Anyway, the flag being carried onto the field in one of the pictures and the several of that same flag being placed to rest" at a flag burning after many years of service during another celebration, both have my brother in them. 

In the one where they are burning the flag, he is the tallest and whitest person with the military black beret on.
 
I also show my friend Jay that served and was honored when they had those that served in the military stand and I wanted to thank my friend Stephanie who served but I wasn't sure she would want a picture of her on here. 

Her son is now also serving. Many of my neighbors have also served and I grateful for them and their service to our nation. Many of them are hard of hearing due to serving in the earlier wars. We often forget the price many of them paid for their service.

So, "Thank YOU" to those who have served or lost someone to service. We can never repay that kindness. 
 
I LOVE the last verse to the National Anthem and it is rarely sung. My favorite line is "And this be our motto; in God is our Trust." If you read this blog much, you won't need to wonder why that is my favorite line and I wish it was sung more. If you don't read this blog much, check out my "In God We Trust" posts to learn more about that.

I wanted to add some patriotic songs to the post so I added the girls singing the national anthem at a game at the top, our family singing "God bless America" in the middle and I will put the fourth verse of the National Anthem at the bottom. Please forgive how stiff we are when singing but we were video taping ourselves so we couldn't move or we wouldn't be on camera. 

I hope you have a happy Fourth Celebration!