35 Ans Ensemble Aujourd'hui

Today, October 2nd 2011, marks 35 years of marriage for mes parents.  35 years - whoooaaaa. (and that's not even counting the time they dated!)


I remember wanting to hear the story of my mom and dad when I was little, and at the time it all seemed so perfectly normal.  Now that I am almost 30, I am baffled by the fact that my mom was only 23 and my dad was only 25 when they got married. While it was perfectly normal at the time, now I can't help but think how young they were!

My mom wore a light, summery dress with billowing sleeves - perfect for 1976. My dad wore a ginormous bow-tie and ruffled dress shirt, baby blue jacket and thick glasses. (He also had thick hair back then :-)

Their flowers were orange tones, probably for fall. My dad's brothers tied tin cans on the back of their car and wrote "Just Married" on the windows with white shoe polish.  It was a wedding before weddings became the crazy events that they are today.

My mom's parents had been deceased for some time, and while both of my dad's parents were there, he wouldn't have his mother much longer after the wedding.

They bought a house and started to make it a home. My mom had a diamond added to her ring for each child they had together - three diamonds total - two girls and a boy.  They raised the three kids together - soccer practice, dance lessons, football games, camping, snipe hunting, family traditions - stressed about three summer birthdays every year and sent all three to college.  Now they support all three in starting their own lives.  They are the parents they never had as adults...to us, their three adult children.

We know that we always have a place to call home, a place where mom and dad will be to give us a hug, make us our favorite dinners, share a cup of coffee in a the morning in our pjs.  We are so lucky - they didn't have this themselves, and yet they've continually put in the effort so that we could.

We've been with them for most of their ups and downs - 35 years of dedication to each other and to the family they created together.  Now that we've had relationships of our own, we know what an important achievement that is.

So, merci à vous deux et  félicitations Moom et  Papasan pour vos 35 ans de mariage!

35 years of dancing through life...