After months of secretive planning, the big day arrived. The official story was that 6 of us were taking Jim and Diane to a nice dinner at Bass Street Chop House. The real deal was that an additional 20 people were joining us as a big surprise celebration. Too much fun. Beautiful flowers courtesy of Trinity's Floral Shop, a fun "then and now" poster custom designed by Jason and the yummy favors that Jean prepared. A nice team effort turned into a beautiful table.
The front side of the favors.......
......and the back.
We used the poster as a guest book - as people arrived they wrote their personal congratulations to the happy couple.
Some cocktails and conversation while we waited for them to arrive.
And then the text from Jean came saying they had parked.....everyone got quiet, we turned off the lights in the room and closed the door. Jason and I waited out in the lobby and then told them our table was in the wine room. It was so awesome that they had NO CLUE. It was a complete surprise which you can see in the video. Clearly having Dan in attendance was a shock and that was really fun too!
Lots of tears and hugs. They are clearly loved by many.
We settled into our tables for a champagne toast.
Dan went first with a few oldest son words of wisdom.
Jason followed up and got a few laughs.
CHEERS to 50 years of marriage!
Here's the whole crew.
We had a lovely meal with lovely company. Here are all of the people that were able to come out to celebrate.
I can't believe I didn't get a picture of our table with the happy couple, the two of us and Jean and Bryan. Ugh. I am so glad Jean was my partner in crime. We planned this whole event together and had a lot of fun doing it. I am so glad we pulled off the surprise and had such a lovely time with so many great people.
So it's been a very long time since I have taken the time to actually post a blog. Somewhere in between the last post and today our lives have take a lot of twists and turns including a job change for me and a move for all of us. I plan to go back and fill in some of the gaps but for now we will focus on the fun of Easter. We enjoyed our Easter weekend without having to travel to see family this year. Certainly a perk of the move! Saturday brought the annual Easter egg hunt at Gram and Pa's church. It's over in a flash so you can't blink. I was pleasantly surprised that Paul still wanted to participate. We are getting to the point where certain things aren't cool any more. His big smile says it all.
Lillie got her fair share of eggs too!
This face requires no caption.
We headed over to Gram and Pa's house for a yummy dinner and of course the annual lamb cake!
Of course Paul wanted to eat the head.
This morning we got spiffed up and headed to Mass. The kids were great for a long Easter Mass.....the priest mentioned there were over 1,000 people in attendance. That's a big group of people celebrating!
That face. This boy. He's looking so much older to me these days. I can't believe he is turning 9 in a few short weeks.
This girl loved her flowered dress. She loves all thing dress and froofy. And she loves to get her hair curled. Lovely inside and out.
This cheeseball looks great in a bow tie. He is happy to wear a bright colored shirt - unlike his older brother. He had extra slicked hair today evidently.
We headed out to GranJo's for brunch and Easter basket fun.
The biggest baskets ever....from Uncle Chris. No smiles. No excitement. At all.
Her basket included a lot of fun dress-up items and a butterfly wand.
Plenty of smiles all day long.
Headed outside for the egg hunt. They were READY!
And they were off.....each kid had their own color and 13 eggs to find.
A few action shots from Miss Lillie finding one of her pink eggs.
Found a green one!
On the hunt for blue eggs!
Pretty full basket. Totally getting this egg hunt thing down pat.
GranJo was clever this year and made Peeps on skateboards. Ha!
We headed home mid-afternoon....with a 15 minute drive instead of 3 hours. After some downtime at the house, we walked to the neighborhood park. It was super windy again today so Paul brought his new cheapo kite and managed to get it quite high in the air.
Peaking through the rock wall.
And we wrapped up our evening celebrating the bucket of cookies from Mimi. And the kids even got to chat with her on the phone.
Such a fun and busy weekend. Beautiful weather. Fun family time.
