FIFTY YEARS!!

(Olympia, WA) No that's not my age! (yet)

Today was the day I had been planning for many months. And from all the comments we got I think it was a success!



January 1, 1957 my parents were married - just 30 minutes into the new year! They had a small wedding with only four people in attendance. But today we had a 50th anniversary party with about 120 people in attendance.


(This was my attempt at fancy photography - see the cake in the mirror.)

You may wonder why we had a party six months after the official anniversary date. Well even though we have a very close-knit family, we don't have a close family. In fact, on my parents date of January 1, they were in Olympia at their house, my brother and his girlfriend were in Canada at his house, our niece Asami was in Europe where she lives, our other niece Yumi was - well we're never sure exactly where Yumi is (teehee), and we were in Florida. So as you can see we aren't close in proximity.

From left: Asami, Mom, Dad, Deb, Mike, Yumi, Dave, Joanna

But today we all came together! Mom's brother and sister-in-law came from Oregon as did all their kids and spouses. It really was so great to have so much family together again. It really is a rare thing now days so it was fantastic.

My brother Dave, Mom, Dad, and me.

In addition to family, many of my parents' friends came to help celebrate the big day. The party was held at The Olympia Golf and Country Club. The have a very nice facility that overlooks Puget Sound. We piped in music from the 50's-60's era, decorated the place, had lots of food, and a beautiful cake.


The cake on top is a carrot cake, the flat cake is half chocolate with chocolate Bavarian creme filling, and half is a white cake with vanilla Bavarian creme filling. Mmmm, good.

As a suprise, I had arranged for a presentation to take place shortly after the gathering started. I spoke a little bit and then showed a five minute slide type presentation complete with music (that wasn't really as loud as I'd hoped). Then my brother and two neices spoke - it was all very touching. After that we had some of their friends tell some stories of memories they had of my parents over the year. Mike then spoke and had everyone laughing.

Finally we played my dad's favorite song (Sha-Boom) for my parents to dance to. Then we had them cut the cake. The rest of the afternoon was spent mingling and eating both hold and cold finger foods, and of course, lots of cake!



From what I could tell, my parents seemed to have enjoyed themselves. Phew, success!!

Happy 50th Anniversary, Mom and Dad.

Debbie
7/22/07