Party

Happy 50th Anniversary to my Mom and Dad!

Whew! 50 years! Can you believe it? That’s a long time together..a big milestone.

When I asked my parents what we should do for their party, they said, “Oh, we don’t need a party. We just took a trip instead.” What? I just couldn’t accept that. What happens with the other aunts and uncles have THEIR 50th, and they they are thinking, “Hey, we should have done a party or something.” So, we discussed this with the siblings. Feelings were mixed, because, after all, they did say they didn’t want a party or anything, right? But it’s FIFTY years. We had to do something.

So, I planned a party at my house, invited all the relatives, but didn’t really tell my mom and dad, I just invited them over.

Things we had to have
-cake
-a photo book or a slide show type thing to share pictures of them throughout the years
-a collection of letters to them congratulating them on this accomplishment
-music
-food
-flowers

And the unwritten requirement that really is the most important thing would be SHADE. Since they cut down the big old junk trees and put in a lovely fence, we have virtually no shade in our backyard, and that ends up being a problem when we want to have parties. We only have three umbrellas (strike that…two umbrellas since one of them got broken in a wind storm) and we have lots of wind.

Ryan’s sister Julene was such a dear to lend us some shade canopies. They actually have a lot of things like that. They have a LOT of parties, and he is the president of the Chilean association, so the association also has some canopies, too. Saturday night we started setting things up, because we would be at church on Sunday, and couldn’t set things up in the morning. It was about a million degrees as we were setting them up, and tempers were short. Oh, and did I mention we had been getting things ready for trek all day and had to turn in the girls buckets and sleeping bags that night by 6:00 and it caused quite a bit of stress? Well, we did.
Thankfully, I did NOT take any pictures of us setting this thing up, but we did finally get it set up, attached a couple of the hanging curtains, and VIOLA! SHADE! Amazing! We set up one 30×10 shade thing, and one 10×10, and with the hanging curtains, that was enough shade at 7:00 or later in the evening. We had TWO of the big white ones, but I convinced Ryan that we didn’t need to set up both of them.

It was quite dark by the time we were done, and, proud of ourselves and happy with how the backyard looked with the tables and chairs and canopies, we went to bed. I don’t know if it was an especially windy night, or if I was just AWARE of it being a windy night, but I heard every howl of the wind. Seriously. Crappy night’s sleep it was for me. In the morning, a sense of dread settled over me, but I had to look. That big white canopy was twisted and definitely not in same place where we had set it up. And we had staked it and everything. Why, oh why, did we leave it up overnight? This is Highland. There is ALWAYS wind. What were we thinking? We went out to discover a few bent poles, but nothing too serious. We put everything back, staked it again, found more tie downs that we should have used in the first place, staked those down, and went inside (because even though it was about 9 in the morning, it was already so hot.)

When we got home from church, we realized that canopy was blowing in the wind AGAIN. What a pain. SO HOT, and SO much trouble with the canopy. Should have done this thing inside.

Cake– I had asked my friend Janeen to make a cake for me. I told her my budget and said she could do whatever she wanted to do. Really.
Well, she came through for us, and even delivered this cake to me on Sunday afternoon.

That 50 on the top is out of modeling chocolate, and she used her new airbrush to stencil on those swirly designs. So pretty.
And when we cut into it and tasted it, it was SO YUMMY!

When my parents arrived, they thought we were just having my sisters and families over, they didn’t know we had invited the WHOLE family, and they were surprised that this was an actual party.

We had flowers,

lots of food, music (Ryan had installed outdoor speakers for this and future parties, isn’t he awesome?) and even had them cut the cake a feed it to each other.

It turned out to be a lovely party, even though it was too hot. By 8:30, it was perfect out!

I”m so thankful for these wonderful parents of mine. I’m glad that we could throw them a party. I hope it was a great anniversary for them, and i hope when WE reach 50 years together (we’re at 21 this year, so only 29 to go…) our kids will throw us a great party, too.