50th Anniversary & Father's day

So in all fairness, these 2 events happened before my first post but I was still figuring this whole thing out :-)

My grandparents-AKA: Namma & Pappa-celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on June 20, 2009. WOW! I don't know that I can even imagine 50 years. They are virtually the only ones in my immediate family that is in their first marriage. In a world where the divorce rate is 50%+, that is amazing to me. When Chris and I were married, I asked them what their tips were for a successful marriage. I asked them seperately and asked that they not tell the other what I was doing. I wanted to see how many of the answers were the same vs. different. I was quite impressed because they were virtually the same. They were asked this question quite a bit during the celebration and with Pappa's sense of humor, I heard an answer he had given before but chose to laugh about it and dismiss it. He said, and I quote "We were too broke to pay for a divorce and by the time we could, we were too old to even think about starting over". In all seriousness, I love them to death and they are a daily reminder to Chris and I that marriage can be successful. Of course, they gave us what may seem to be textbook answers-communication, never go to bed angry, trust and forgiveness but there was one thing they said that was so simple and made complete sense but hadn't occured to me. Divorce wasn't an option. Once that option was no longer on the table, you came up with other solutions to the problem(s). See? Simple. But, not so simple. Marriage is a lot of work as I've learned in my almost 2 years of marriage. Times get tough, things are said, thoughts are thought but in the end, we can make it through. That's what I've learned from Namma & Pappa after 50 years of marriage.

I was more than honored to help them celebrate this once in a lifetime accomplishment. I wanted to throw a big party and make a big deal out of it..because, quite frankly, it is a big deal. They didn't want the big hoorah. They requested a simple dinner with close friends and family. I say close family because as you may know, Namma is 1 of 14 children-yes, I said 14-all of which have had children of their own, who have had children, who have had children. To put this into perspective, Namma is one of the older siblings-my mom has an Aunt that is a couple months younger than her-therefore, Namma's mom was still having babies while her babies were having babies. We try to have a family reunion every year, and I'm not kidding when I say this, there are 100+ of just family.

This was 5 years ago-cousins only with some out of towners missing and a handful of little ones that were just a twinkle in their parents eyes:





Ok so moving on. They wanted an "intimate" dinner so this included 2 of her sisters with their family along with my uncle and his family and my mom and us. Namma also had 1 other request which was to have a wedding cake since she never had one. I was happy to oblige and the night was wonderful. She even called me the next morning saying she hadn't slept because she was still on cloud 9! YAY!

cake table:



gift/card table:

Now onto Father's Day which was the next day. Chris was able to sleep in-a little-but compared to his normal 4 am wake up call, sleeping until almost 9 is pretty good. Braedon was so anxious when he got up to give Daddy his gifts that he had picked out. Braedon picked him out a new pair of Oakley sunglasses and a "Dad" ring. I also took pictures of the boys playing around with letters to spell out Daddy for his desk at work. They turned out GREAT! I definitely have some future models on my hands if I say so myself :-) After that, we met my dad for lunch at one of the local country clubs then off to see Chris' mom and grandma-LOL on Father's day but we hadn't seen them in a while and his dad was running errands for things for the house they just moved into. Then we had a nice relaxing night at home. All in all it was a good day :-)