Our Parent's 50th Wedding Anniversary

We just celebrated our parent's 50th wedding anniversary!

5 kids, 22 grandkids and 50 fun filled years!

All the children, their spouses and 20 of the grandkids were able to gather for a weekend to celebrate!

We kicked it off with a dinner in Salt Lake City at the beautiful Joseph Smith Memorial Building which used to be the grand hotel Utah and still has the architectural detailing inside.

This dinner was held on their actual anniversary day and at the time they were married 50 years ago!

We decorated the tables with a flower arrangement and different 5x7 photos of the cute couple.

One of our niece's put together these beautiful flower arrangements.

Each place setting had some games to play and a wrapped Sees Chocolate bar.

Sees chocolate has been a part of our growing up years for special occasions.

We knew we had to include some chocolate for the evening.

And gave our parents an assorted box.

Our sister-in-law, Jen, put together these cute polkadot wrappers and tags for the chocolate at each place setting.

Kristin came up with these fun games.

First up was 50 Years in Numbers.

Family trivia type questions relating to the number of things.

You got 3 number choices for each question.

Questions included:

Number of homes Mom and Dad have lived in.

Number of combined years they have supported their kids in sports.

Number of years they have "enjoyed" children's piano lessons.

Number of pets they cared for in their home.

Number of combined years practicing in their professions.

Number of marathons.

Number of years they dated.

Number of degrees between the two of them.

Number of grandkids.

Number of children.

She calculated that our parents have spent

50 years, 600 months, 18,262 days, 438,291 hours and over 26 million minutes together!

Our brother lead us in a toast to the couple and then we ate dinner.

The dinner menu included, a fresh salad, roasted chicken dinner and

strawberry shortcake dessert.  A favorite of our mom's.

 We next played 50 Wonderful Years.

Kristin made up the questions and to answer you'd hold up a running shoe if you thought it was grandpa or a sewing needle and thread if you thought the answer was grandma.

So cute!

Questions included:

Who noticed who first in high school?

Who approached the other first at the Hello Dance?

Who said "I love you" first?

Who was the one who chose Arizona to settle in?

Who got up in the night with babies?

Who is the better dancer?

Whose idea was it to start the Nutcracker tradition/collection?

Who suggested to get a dog for the family?

Who wanted to install a pool in the backyard?

Who has the bigger sweet tooth?

Who is more adventurous?

Who gave the first kiss?

Who never forgets and anniversary or birthday?

This was really entertaining,

the kids especially loved it!

It was a great way to get to know the grandparents and each question spring boarded into more of an explanation of the event.  We all learned something new about these two!

 To wrap up the evening, we gave a couple group gifts.
Kristin had the great idea to give them a music box (our family has a history with music boxes)
This one payed "their song".
The folks teared up with that gift.

Next, Carrie presented them with their personal histories book 

that she had put together on Shutterfly
She used the milestone anniversary template,

and  highly recommends the company and their customer service.

Even when there was a mix up with the printing, they reprinted everything at no cost!

This was just day one of the festivities!

The next day we drove up to the town they grew up in to tour around.

We drove by the homes they grew up in, some grandparent's homes, schools, church, and toured their high school.  

We were in several cars so our mom made up a "tour guide" for each car, listing the locations we were driving by the and the significance for each.  They also packed us some snacks/candy they would eat as kids and a bag of our mom's famous caramel corn. Yum!

We drove up a local canyon past the venue where they were married and stopped for lunch at a local burger place along the river that has been around forever.

We had a lot of time for family to visit and cousins to play together.

On day three, we had an extended family picnic at a local park.

Here's the front and back of an invite we sent out to extended family members.

Just uploaded our design to the Costco photo center to make the invitations.

(Don't you love that wedding photo!)

We provided the main dish, while cousins and aunts and uncles brought the sides and desserts.

It was so fun to see and visit with everyone.  

Some we hadn't seen in years!

The kids had a ball,

literally with our giant dodge ball game!

What an awesome weekend!

Some of us even stayed on a few extra days and ran in a 5K with our dad.

He's a runner and has run in several marathons and 5Ks.

Almost 20 of us ran. 75 year old dad even came in 4th in his age bracket!

Here's to the cute couple!

50 years and going!