Reminiscing

This weekend seemed to be a lot about reminiscing. Friday was fraught with a lot of things to get done and not enough time. On top of a party for Chris’s work (which was really nice and had lots of yummy food,) we had to get ready for his parent’s 50th Wedding Anniversary Party.

I met a lady from our church (L. Smith) to decorate the church that Chris attends. She had all these great ideas for decorating and they came out great. One was to have Chris’s parents come up with some pictures to put on the tables for people to look at. This would be overlaid with a clear tablecloth so that people could still sit and eat and look at the pictures.

The funny thing is that Chris’s parents took to this task and provided us with way too many pictures. We still put about 90 percent of them on the tables though. It was neat to look back at pictures at even myself through the years that they had stock-piled.  Joan also had her original wedding dress, shoes and some other nostalgic items.  She even had the dress she was engaged in.  I have no clue what I was wearing on that day, but the reason she remembers, from what I was told by someone else, is that she was engaged at her prom.  That also expalined the fancy dress.

Another neat thing is their granddaughter Brittanie drew this picture of them on the dry-erase board, taking it from a portrait they had done a long time ago.

After we were done decorating we went over to his parent’s house where a majority of the family who were coming in for the celebration were hanging out. I grabbed what food was left and was ready to go after I ate it. I was exhausted and my feet ached. I was wishing for a personal masseuse at that point.

Saturday the 21st was the big day and I was nervous and hopeful that everything would go well, especially in regards to Makenna. People came for the open house portion from 1pm-4pm and it went well. We had enough finger-foods to keep people satisfied and ran out of a punch that someone had told me about which was delicious – obviously by how fast it went.

Chris’s father Jim introduced me to this one gentleman who looked vaguely familiar to me and when I was told he was a neighbor to them, which explained the familiarity. As I walked away I knew that wasn’t it. I went back and asked if he happened to be a teacher. He promptly replied, “Please don’t tell me you were one of my students!” I laughed and said I was. He was a math teacher at West Middle (S. Liberto)

I said one of the reasons I remember him was because he had kicked me out of class. He jokingly said, “You look like a kid who’d cause trouble.” I explained that he had walked in on the tail end of a fight where I through a snow-ball at a kid who had been harassing me. As I was the one finishing the fight with a snow-ball, I was the one thrown out. I was surprised that I actually remembered him and that incident.

I left around 2:30pm to get Makenna home for a nap so that she would be good for the dinner portion. It was a good brief break for me too. I think I did get a small cat-nap in there somewhere.

Back to the party around 5:30pm for the dinner portion which was from 6pm-9pm. We had it catered so it was a lot less work for us which was nice. It was just family and a bit more intimate. I think it went well and we had a lot of left over food. I was ready to collapse and wished I had a day to just sleep.

On Sunday I agreed to meet family and friends up at the cottage, even though it was a rainy day. After church Makenna and I went home, got things together and went up. One of our friends brought a 40 year DVD of Sesame Street. That was truly neat to see and I couldn’t stop watching as there were a lot of things on there I had forgotten about.

Makenna has never been huge into Sesame Street so I find it hard to justify buying this DVD but I just might – it was so nostalgic. I think because of running into the old teacher, and old friend from work on Thursday night, and this DVD that it set me up to reminisce quite a bit about a lot of different things. Not that, that’s bad but just interesting to look back and see where life’s choices have lead you. Hopefully in another 43 years I can be having my 50th wedding anniversary and reminiscing about this one.