It's a Celebration!

Did you know we leave next week for a family cruise to Mexico? The cruise celebrates my parent's 40th wedding anniversary and the whole family is going - 8 adults, 6 kids. We will be joined on the ship by my parents, Shelly & Bryan and kids, and David & Leah with Alexander. Our kids seem confused that we will be sleeping on a boat large enough for a swimming pool and a miniature golf course. Their faces will be fun to watch when it is time to board the ship. It will be really nice to get away from all this unusually cold weather here in Houston for a few days.

On my parent's anniversary, we hosted a dinner at our house and Brian prepared a wonderful gourmet meal for everyone. He and Bryan K. really got into it and even went so far as to plate the dishes so when we sat down, everyone had their food in front of them. It looked like something off a cooking show. The meal consisted of Crab Cakes with a Lemon Beurre Blanc sauce, Shrimp & Spinach salad with roumalade, & Steak Diane. Shelly has pictures of the table on her blog at http://allthingskelly.blogspot.com/

I ordered a centerpiece for the table made up of their wedding flowers and my sister had a cake made to put their original wedding topper on it. It was beautiful. I also printed out 20 pictures of them as a couple over the years and had them framed in clusters all over the house w/candles and rose petals. They had a lot of fun looking at the pictures - trying to figure out when each one was taken.

Leah, Shelly and I had been working on getting a slide show presentation together of Mom & Dad & their life together since Fall. Leah put it all together and finished it just in time for the party. Everyone loved it. Course I think we should have watched it before dinner and the toasts because after 4 hours of us all being together and drinking wine it was a little hard to concentrate on the show. Mom & Dad said they loved it when they got to watch it by themselves later. It really was very special.

I hope we can celebrate again in 5 years and then again in 10 for their 50th anniversary.

In the meantime, watch for pictures to be posted with all of us wearing our orange life preservers during the lifeboat drill!