50 Years and Beyond

Thursday was a long but fun day. We celebrated Mom & Dad's 50th Wedding Anniversary with about 150 people.

Just after noon we set up tables, chairs, decorations and sound equipment at the church and Becky assembled the cake. Then we took Mom & Dad to Chuck-a-Rama for lunch/dinner.

After that we set out refreshments and figured out the chocolate fountains. Thank heavens Lila was experienced in running a chocolate fountain. There's more to it than just dumping a bunch of chocolate in the fountain and waiting for it to melt. Who knew?

Lila spent the night melting chocolate, David (Jason) spent the night running to the store for more milk chocolate and Sheri and I spent the night watching over the refreshment table. The chocolate dippers we set out were: strawberries, bananas, marshmallows, pretzels, oreos, cinnamon bears, orange slices, rice crispy treats and vanilla wafer cookies (the rectangle kind with frosting in the middle). Some things we brought twice as much of as we needed (or more - sprite, strawberries, marshmallows, rice crispy treats, oreos), some things we figured just about right (cinnamon bears, orange slices, vanilla wafer cookies, bananas). The only thing we were short on was the milk chocolate. Who knows what people are going to like or how much they are going to eat?

Sheri & Becky made a bunch of very tasty rhubarb slush. Even people who don't usually like rhubarb liked it. Several people asked Sheri for the recipe.

Becky made a huge, beautiful cake with white fondant, edible pearls and gold stars, gold ribbons, a sparkly broach and a gold and diamond-y 50 on top. The 2 top layers were carrot cake and the huge bottom layer was chocolate. Apparently the carrot cake was more popular, because we brought half of the chocolate layer home at Becky's urging. Today I gave 1/2 of what we brought home to Tammie when she came by to get some rhubarb Meagan procured for her.

David (brother) and Becky found some cute glass and metal lanterns at Ikea with star cut-outs for the tables. Then David and Meagan looped gold ribbon around the lanterns and sprinkled sparkly gold star confetti on the tables. The final touch was a white star-shaped mylar balloon tied to each lantern. They searched for gold and silver balloons, but nobody was selling those. It would have looked nice, but it looked fine without them. Sheri had Laureen to make a corsage, boutonniere and a couple of fresh flower arrangements.

Dorian Mirth played lovely Renaissance music in the background. Over the course of the evening Becky sang Mom and Dad's wedding theme song "Stardust" three times. Besides talking to all their guests, I'm guessing that was their favorite part of the evening.

From what I could tell, Christopher spent the evening taking photos of the event. He also put together a very nice video with photos of Mom, Dad and the family. I watched it in the hallway while I rested my aching feet. I'm not used to standing up that long!

Holly furnished all the plates, cups, etc. and spent the night doing what she does best - socializing! Speaking of socializing, I saw tons of people I hadn't seen in ages - most notably Cori, our next-door neighbor who practically lived with us until she turned 12. Sheri had told me Cori hasn't changed much, and she hasn't. She's still as goofy as ever, which I always liked about her. I told her I still have the plastic dinosaur she gave me for my birthday years ago and named Alfred. Cori laughed at that. I tried to give Alfred to the DI once, but my kids wouldn't hear of it. "You can't give Alfred away!" They were right, of course. My heirlooms are not going to be crystal and china, but plastic dinosaurs and plush hammerhead sharks. Which is just about right for me...

David ran out of oxygen around 8:00, but Cameron got him safely home to an oxygen refill. Thank goodness we have kids who can drive now. In fact, Cameron spent the morning chauffering Sheri and me around to various stores.

After we cleaned up the church and loaded everything into the car, we stopped by Mom and Dad's for Tammie's rhubarb and Meagan's clothes. Dad regaled Mom, Meagan and me with stories about his Army days. I've heard them before, but I never get tired of hearing how he outsmarted his obnoxious CO several times over the course of two years.

Unfortunately, I had to work a full day on Friday. Friday is schedule phone call day - my least favorite day because someone always has to change the schedule once we gone to great lengths to set it up. Usually more than one someone. I felt like laying on the floor and going to sleep, but somehow I made it through. Thank goodness.

This morning we got up early for Cameron and Jarom's parade. The Murray parade is always longer than the West Fest parade. West Fest only had one float - ironically, it was the Murray float. The Murray parade had at least a dozen floats. My favorite parts were Cameron & Jarom's band (of course) and the bagpipe band. I love bagpipe bands in the great outdoors. Made me long for another Scottish Festival.

After the parade, we went to Becky's house for treats and hamburgers and Wii games. Amber was reluctant to play "Just Dance" at first, then she kind of took over the game. We played "Rabbids TV Party," too. Becky let us take that game home so we could play it longer.

Becky and I took Dana and Byron outside to feed the ducks corn tortillas. I tossed a whole tortilla in the water - one duck snapped it up with his bill and the other ducks chased after him. I tossed another one to a mama duck and her babies and accidentally hit one of the babies with it. The mama duck quacked at me, but the baby ducked under the water and was fine. Byron kept chasing the ducks trying to hand them bits of tortilla and couldn't figured out why they kept running away from him in droves. Dana thought it was hilarious that they kept running away from her, but I put at stop to that.

Now I'm on the internet looking for a strawberry freezer jam recipe. I've got to do something with 4 pounds of strawberries before they go bad. Becky said Dana and Byron ate almost an entire 4 pound box yesterday. My goodness - that's alot of strawberries for 2 little kids! At least it's something healthy, I can't believe they could eat that much in one day. Wow.

UPDATE: Apparently Holly and Gary spent the entire Anniversary Party manning the guestbook and nursery. No wonder I rarely saw them. From what I heard the kids in the nursery loved Gary.

Also, the man in charge of the church was shocked to not find even one gold glitter star in the church the next day. Sheri heard that he, who is particularly hard to please, wishes all party throwers cleaned the church as well as we did. That, and Mom got every single chocolate and rhubarb slush stain out of the white table cloths. Impressive if you saw the chocolate fountain table cloth. I had no idea Mom is a stainmaster.