50th Wedding Anniversary!!

My Mom and Dad's 50th Wedding Anniversary is on June 29th.  Congratulations Mom and Dad!  We couldn't be prouder of you and appreciate your terrific example of a wonderful marriage!  We decided months ago to celebrate this special occasion a couple of weeks early since my family would be in town this weekend.  It also worked out well for Chris's wedding this weekend too.  When I asked mom what she wanted to do to celebrate she suggested a simple dinner out with the family.  So mom and dad and all of us kids and mom's brother and sister all came to celebrate this wonderful occasion.  Dad's brother and sisters were not able to come since they all live far away.  Jeni put together a slide show of pictures through the years and I gave them the Photo History Book I have been working on for the past year.   Woops, looks like my Uncle's head is blocked in the picture -- sorry Uncle Arnold!  It was neat to be able to have my Grandma there too.  She is my mom's mom and is now 94 years old.  She can't remember a lot but it was neat to be able to have her recognize many of the pictures from those early years!  

 The book turned out really nice.  It is 12X12 and came to 313 pages.  Here are some sample pages:

 

 

Dear Mom and Dad:

A year ago I felt impressed to begin work on a photo book that would include pictures and memorabilia from your life and our family.  I wanted to put this together as a gift for your 50^th Wedding Anniversary.  That is what started the big project of gathering photos, slides, negatives, and other memorabilia to be digitally scanned as well as researching dates and names and editing pictures!  I wanted to include as many pictures as I could find from these past fifty years so that they could all be preserved in one place.  I realized halfway through this project, however, that I had too many pictures for just one book (and not enough time) to give justice to all 50 years.

 So in order to break it down into a more manageable project, I decided that this book would focus on the first 20 years of our family with pictures and details as well as pictures and histories from your growing up years.  (Getting you to start on your personal histories was an added benefit!)  I figured I could do another book (or two) later focusing on the rest of the years.  But I didn't like the idea of ending this book in 1982 and so I decided to add one or two pages of pictures from each year after that to bring it up to the present year, so that it does still cover all 50 years.  I hope to make another book later on focusing on the next twenty years and then another which will bring us up to the current date.

I have to admit that this project has been extremely overwhelming and time-consuming but I have learned so much about our family and have been filled with incredible gratitude as I have developed a deeper understanding of how truly blessed I am to have been born into such a wonderful family!  I have recalled so many experiences and blessings that I had not thought about for years!  

I would just like to express my gratitude for our wonderful upbringing!  You have been amazing parents to all of us and continue to be wonderful parents and grandparents.  We are privileged to have been born into such a home as this!   I just hope we can live up to our privileges and continue to pass on these wonderful blessings to our own children.  I hope you enjoy this keepsake of our family!   All of the kids also went in on this book with me, so it is from ALL of us! 

We love you!

Wendy