A time for celebration

As you can see from the inactivity on my blog, I took most of the month of May off. May 5th my husband and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. Our daughters, with the help of my family, gave us a party on the 23rd. The party took place at our house, and so I could enjoy myself during this time and get ready for the house full of people we had, I decided to take a few weeks off and get the house ready. Since my allergies were so bad, I hadn't done yardwork at all last year. Needless to say I had a lot of landscaping work ahead of me. I'm happy to say that by the time relatives started comeing into town my house was ready and I could sit back and enjoy evenings in the backyard with everyone.

The party was great! Ali was the "head party planner" :), but with the help of Katie, Cassie, my parents and my brother and sister, Mark and Stephanie, they all gave us something to really remember!!! Mark and Stephanie, you have no idea how much you did for us this weekend and what it means to me-I'll never forget it! This was the first time my entire immediate family was able to be together since Stephanie's daughter Emma came into our family. My parents as well as my brother, Mark and his family, came from southern California; my sister Stephanie and her husband and daughter came from Colorado; my other sister, Kim came with her daughters from Visalia; my aunt, uncle (thanks Uncle Bob for taking photos) and cousins Cherie and Skylar came from the bay area. Unfortunately, none of Louie's family was able to make it. It was so much fun to spend time with all the friends who came. However, by far the biggest surprise was that Louie's childhood friend, Greg came with his wife, Suzie. Greg was a groomsman in our wedding and he and Louie have known each other for about 45 years, but we haven't seen them in over 15 years. It was fun for Louie and me to have our oldest friends at the party, since my friend Scott also was able to make it (you may remember him from Louie's 50th birthday party a few months ago). I also wanted to thank my friend Jo. As always, she was a huge help and is always willing to do anything for anyone!
We received so many wonderful gifts as well. My parents gave us a family tree plaque. They have one and it has everyone's names engraves on it with their birthstones-it even has the spouses and all the grandkids. Right now there are only five on ours, but I'm sure that by the time our 50th rolls around, it will be loaded! :)
It's so strange to think I've been married for 25 years, because I remember my parents celebrating their 25th as Louie and I were planning our wedding. I always wonder if I'm really old enough to have been married that long, or to have daughters in their 20's, and then I just look in the mirror and my question is answered :)
I've had a lot of people asking to see photos from last week and clamoring for a slideshow, so here it is!
I'm sure you'll get a good laugh out of some of the photos, because I put some old ones of us through the years in here. Be gentle...remember we all went through the 1980s :-) ENJOY!!!!!