Happy 70th Anniversary Grandma & Grandpa!!!!

This weekend my grandparents celebrated their 70th anniversary! Needless to say, this was cause for celebration!

We enjoyed a weekend with extended family, and on Sunday we had a reception at the church. It was nice to see friends and family we don't get to see often (and those we do).

The big girls really stepped up this weekend and were great helpers.  I'd warned them in advance, that Mama (my mom) was going to be busy and wouldn't have time to play with them. We also talked about how, sometimes things they could normally help with, when people are in a hurry it's most helpful to stay out of the way when grownups can do a job faster. And they did great! They offered to help often, but were accepting when told no. They played by themselves when asked, watched Little Bit when asked . . . I was SOOO proud of how well they did during a chaotic weekend when they got way too little sleep (lots of people making lots of noise way past their bedtimes. I believe it is completely unfair to ask children to try to go to sleep in a house full of people talking loudly, so didn't even try).

Little Bit did well too, I was at least able to help mom with all the extra work part of the time, while she either played with toys (the travel aqua doodle has been a HUGE hit! I had to laugh at how often some of the grown-ups would stop and draw a quick picture on it LOL), or played with the big girls, or sat on some relative's lap and "talked" to them.

By the end of the weekend I could tell the lack of sleep was really getting to Little Bit (naps were hard to catch with all the activity and, like her sisters, bedtime happened later than usual because of all the people still there late into the evening. Whereas her sisters WOULD eventually have fallen asleep despite the noise, and if they'd been showing signs of being over-tired, I would have insisted that they go to bed anyway, Little Bit is such a light sleeper that it would have been pointless to even try to put her to bed until the house quieted down).

Anyway . . . the celebration was nice. Mom & Dad had put HOURS (and HOURS and HOURS) into putting together a power point slide show of pictures starting with my grandfather's grandparents! (yes, the date on that picture was in the mid-1800s!) down to present. In addition to the "fiddly" aspect of anything like that, resizing and cropping pictures, putting them in order, etc. they also had to scan alot of them, which is also fiddly & time consuming .BUT it was SO worth it!! People LOVED the slide show and perhaps best of all, I think Grandpa (who is extremely hard of hearing and often doesn't enjoy large gatherings because it's so noisy he can't hear anyone/anything) really enjoyed not only seeing all the old pictures, but sitting near it and talking to people about the pictures, and the people in the pictures.

Some of MY favorite pictures from the power point included a picture of Grandpa's father & his twin brother when they were probably 2, sitting together posed for a formal picture in their cute little dresses that little boys wore back then. So cute to see some of the other twins in our family LOL. There was also a picture of Grandma's father (I think it was) at about age 10, with long ringlet curls, dressed in old fashion knee britches or whatever they were. So fun! When we were showing the pictures to my grandparents (and other family who were around) on Sabbath afternoon, it was funny, Grandma had been very frustrated, when Mom had been pulling pictures together because she knew she had a picture SOMEWHERE of herself when she graduated from nursing school, and it would have "coordinated" nicely with a formal picture of grandpa at about that age. But she couldn't find it. However, a scanned copy of that picture was included in a bunch of scanned pictures that Mom & Dad got from Grandma's sister (I think it was). So they had the picture in the slide show. We had just seen the one of Grandpa and Grandma was telling us how frustrated she was that she couldn't find the one of her, when it popped up on the screen, the look on her face was priceless!

During the program, I got Lina's Aqua Doodle out for her, and, since at that time people were kind of everywhere, just sat her right down in the corner (under the piano) where I'd stashed the diaper bag. Thought it made a cute picture LOL.

In addition to tons of yummy food at the celebration, my uncle and 2 of my cousins sang a song, and several of people got up and talked about their memories of Grandma and Grandpa and things they appreciate about them.

And of course cake! (that's the picture up at the top).

After everything was over, the girls were, again, a great help cleaning up, loading stuff into the cars, and then unloading when we got home. Dad's Yukon XL was FULL of stuff, and the girls, my Dad, and my mom's cousin pretty much unloaded ALL of it! (I helped when I could, but Little Bit was pretty clingy by then. Mom was busy directing where to put stuff once we brought it in).

Anytime we are at my parents' house we walk out to my grandparents' house a few times while we're there (they live on Mom & Dad's property, so the "road" is just their driveway). During one of our walks out there this weekend, I snapped this picture of Little Bit running ahead, isn't it cute?!?

Another cute Little Bit story from this weekend, when we were all sitting around visiting, Little Bit was on Papa's lap playing with his phone. He decided to have some fun, so called my phone and had me answer. The look on Little Bit's face when she heard my voice on the phone (and across the room, but with enough delay (since both were cell phones) that she heard it both places distinctly) was PRICELESS!! We all got a kick out of it! It occurred to me that, while she "talks" on the phone quite often (takes one of our cell phones, holds it to her ear and "talks"), she's never actually "talked on the phone" when there was someone on the other end. So funny!

So, all in all a great weekend! My grandparents seemed to have a really good time. It was nice seeing people we don't get to see often ,and the girls all handled it beautifully.