25th wedding Anniversary

To those of you who do not know us, this momentous 25th wedding anniversary is a great achievment. You see it is the second marriage for each of us. I, (Joni) came into the marriage with 6 children, 2 girls and 4 boys and Cec (pronounced like cease) has two daughters the eldest a little younger than my youngest, so you see, I could have had the whole shebang. We just say we have 4 boys and 4 girls, a great family, and now we have 30 grandchildren and 22 great grandchildren, and counting. they are all over creation, and only the youngest boy and family in the upper level of the big duplex that we live in near Castlegar, British Columbia.
We both originally started off in Manitoba and about 22 years ago moved to Vancouver and two years ago, wanting to get out of the big city and smog, moved back out to the country and have finally settled here on .82 ac of land. We have kids upstairs to look after us in our old age, just in case that ever happens. It will not be anytime soon (even tho' we are both in our 70's) as we are still going strong. Joni does not walk as well as she used to but can still do things sitting down like email and internet, and now blogging and sewing and even gardening with the help of stools around the yard to sit on from time to time. Cec, on the other hand, can do anything and continues to do just that, be it digging up stones or drywalling or renovating our lower level. the list goes on and on and he continues to go on too, as he builds in lovely improvements to our wonderful home.
Well, this blogg was supposed to be about our 25th and I have not even started on the big party yet. It was Cec's love and intention of having everyone together, yes, in one place, and have a huge picture taken with our great family, but unfortunately this was not going to happen. the actual date of our 25th is Aug 20, 2008. Being the missle of the week we decided on a party Sat afternoon and evening. We soon found out that not everyone could come for a zillion reasons. School starts early in the states, someone was pregnant in Winnipeg and expecting early sept so travelling at that time was not possible, another was helping one of the grandchildren make a big move south, on and on. We decided to go on with our plans and have the kids come when ever they could so this anniversary has spread out all the way from June until now.
The first to come was Doug and Lyn (the pregnant ones) who came for a couple of weeks the beginning of June. We had a great time and even lent them our car and camper for a few days to travel to Kelowna and round about for a holiday of their own, and visit beautiful BC and look for affordable housing. Joke, affordable in BC?
They did enjoy their holiday tho'.
The second part of our celebration happened for a week starting after the middle of June, in Seattle. I called it a quarter family reunion as it was Victor and Art and their families, all meeting in Seattle. I believe Victor and pm are starting an every two year family reunion of their own and this was in conjuntion to theirs, that we choose to call in a continuation of our 25th.
On the first of Aug Roxy and Stuart Wright came with all their gang for a few days of fun and adventure. they are so busy with their Heart's Haven Ranch and building a new house and buildings in raymond AB that we were very lucky to get 4 days out of them and packed it with as many fun filled things as possible, like a trip to the caves in Ainsworth Hot springs, the historic old paddle wheeler SS moyie, now a museum in Kaslo and even a hike up to our own Glade waterfall just across the Kootenay river from us and a short trip across a free ferry. I sure hope that I can finally figure out how to enter pictures in this blog as we have many fun ones. This trip culminated in a lovely back yard Bar-B-Q and nice bonfire and even a trip to the local beauty parlor for all the girls and eventually even some of the boys got involved. Bob and Janet are Foster Parents and you never know how many extras there will be around at any one time.
The next to come was Carolin from Winnipeg on Aug 5th with Pam from Maumelle AR joining her on Aug 10 and we again filled our days with as much as we could pack in. They both left on Aug 13th, Pam going straight to Utah for the graduation of Becca and Russ from BYU and Carolin, to go back to her job in Wpg.
On the 20th of Aug, the actual date of our anniversary we started out at a new little Mexical restaurant just down the road, called the' Upside Down Zebra' (that is another story) for some delicious home cooked supper and then off to Music in the prk in Castlegar, but it was cancelled due to threatening rain, (and it never did rain until later that night) so we just drove around and followed roads we had never been on before. It was a wonderful opportunity to get to know our neighbourhood.
Ah, the day of the local party the 25th of Aug. This was an afternoon/evening, outside party mostly for our local neighbors and some of the gals from my Aquasize group and a few church members (most were away on holidays). It was a pot luck 'getting to know you' affair with absolutely no gifts. We said on the invitation that the price of gas and their food contribution, to gift us with their presence was all the present that we needed. It was decorated up by Janet and the boys complete with a banner and lots of balloons and decorated tables and a surprise anniversary cake. We utilized the Upside down Zebra for our large contribution to the food tables, in the form of megga mexican food. They even delivered but could not stay for the party as the restaurant was opened and business as usual. Actually the only other family members to be supposed to come was Carmi and Angela with their two darling daughters from Winnipeg and they were looking forward to a wonderful holiday in BC but unfortunately their car broke down the week before the trip and with the cost of repairs and time to do the repairs the whole holiday budget was used up. We can just be thankful that it did not happen in the mountains. They hope next spring they may be able to make it out.
Well, this party is not over yet! On the Labour Day long weekend we had Victor and Ayako and Emma and LLoyd from Vancouver and Gary and Cathy from Edmonton with Ben and Pam and their 5 children from Edmonton. Also my good friend Erissa came out on her red Harley to join in the festivities. Fortunately we had enough spare rooms and beds (some on the floor) to hold everyone so nobody had to sleep in a tent or the campers. The weather was good anyway, but setting up and taking down is time consuming , time which we wanted to spend visiting. What a wonderful time for all. Cathy left with Victor and Ayako to go back to her job in Linden USA and Gary left for his job in Edmonton. Maybe some day those two will end out working in the same city. LOL
The following week we went up to Cranbrook with our camper to attend our Stake Conference. Bob came with us as our camper sleeps three and Janet did not want to take the boys on such a long trip for the weekend so it worked out fine. It did rain thro' the night so we had to pack up the camper wet and drive home but it soon dried out once back on sunny Thrums land.
We have been richly blessed, and I guess have seen all of our children except Val in Independence MO, but we did see her and Jay and all the family last Dec so I still have some sort of recent pictures.
For my first ever attempt at a Blog, this has proved to be quite a long one. I hope I have not bored you all to tears. I am just getting started so there will be more to come. We have the Wheat Grass growing operation, dehydrating, green drink and other interesting things to share in later blogs.
This is fun! . Hugs from The Bunds ;-} ;-} ;-} ;-} ;-}