Three Gratitudes - Day 14

Continuing on my quest to feel happiness, I'm going to post three things I'm grateful for for 21 days.

This entry is inspired by one of the best days of my life.

Mom, Galore, Shorty and Butch -
they came all the way from Minnesota!

  1. My parents made it to their 50th Wedding Anniversary. I think 50 years of marriage is going to become more and more rare as society has changed. I'm lucky that my parents have had a long and happy marriage. Sure, they bicker but they love and support each other and they love and support Steven and me. I'll be eternally grateful to have them as my parents.
  2. That my parents are the people they are. I was amazed at the turnout for my parents' anniversary party. Not only did we have four generations of family members in attendance, there were literally childhood friends of my Dad's there as well as family friends from when we lived in Wisconsin, crap it's a long time, 40 years ago. The biggest surprise was when people that we used to camp with in the early 70s walked into the room. They live in Minneapolis now but they drove over and booked a hotel just to attend the party. It's a testament to the warmth and stickiness of my parents. They've kept up with all of those relationships and developed new ones with each generation that comes along. People weren't at the party because they felt obligated, they were there because they truly wanted to celebrate my parents.
  3. All the party help we had. Neither Steven nor I really got a chance to sit down and eat because we were constantly on the go mingling and posing for pictures. We couldn't have done it all without help, though. There was my cousin Mike who brought his cotton candy machine, his son Brian who made the cakes, Brian's sister Jenny who helped serve the cakes, cousin Sue who helped me scout locations, her husband Darren who took over the serving line and made sure it was constantly stocked, Aunt Joan who hosted us at her home and helped with setup and a lot of people who brought coolers and ice. There were also plenty of people who showed up and asked, "What can I do to help you?" and then happily took on a task. Everyone was awesome but I was most grateful to have Steven there. Not only did he graciously greet everyone, he played with the kids and he made sure I always had a beer in my hand. 
Celebrating our good job as party hosts.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TV At Its Finest

I was talking to someone today who didn’t know who Bob Newhart was. I cut him some slack because he’s a youngster and didn’t grow up in the U.S. I told him about The Bob Newhart show and how it became a college drinking game and about Newhart, "Hi, I'm Larry; this is my brother Darryl, and this is my other brother Darryl." He was going to go to Wikipedia and do some research. The conversation got me thinking. Back in the day (like when dinosaurs were alive and I was young and there were only four channels on TV), we caught a lot of reruns of what are now considered classic TV. Especially, if you were a latchkey kid like I was, there wasn’t a lot going on in the afternoon/early evening so it was either soap operas or reruns unless you were allowed to be outside and play. And, of course, during summer vacation you had even more time to watch the boob tube. Here’s what I remember watching during those years: Gilligan’s Island, Big Valley (I’m still looking for my very own N...
Read more

February 2020

Image
Most of 2020 sucked. But, there were some good moments that made memories to cling to. I'm going to review some of those moments from each month. (Disclaimer - my memory isn't what it used to be so this is my story and I'm sticking to it regardless of reality.) I moved into my house in May of 2019 and it was already hot out so I used the Arizona summer as an excuse not to do anything to my patio or yard. I don't recall what excuse I used to justify ignoring the both in the fall and winter. Let's go with complete laziness. It's entirely plausible. However, I had to get on the stick and pretty it up because I had a bunch of company scheduled for the spring. The first thing I did was get some inexpensive chairs from Target for my beat up table. I honestly thought I could jam them into my car. I really, really did. One would never guess I was a Tetris master. After several futile attempts, this is how it ultimately went down. Adam (answering cell): Hi, Kathy! Me: Hi...
Read more