65th Anniversary

I sit here tonight, with colored index cards littered around me, in preparation for the toast I am giving tomorrow at my Grandparent's 65th surprise Anniversary party. I was honored when weeks ago, my mom asked me to write a special poem and toast to read in their honor. I enjoy these kinds of things. I wrote a poem to go along with my speech for my sister's wedding toast when I was her maid of honor.  I love writing, and I love when writing something special can make someone feel honored on an important day in their life.

So my mother and I have been emailing back and forth to each other all of those, "Remember when..." type of things you remember from growing up, so I can use them in my speech. It is funny to think of my mother having a childhood, before she was my mother. It is funny to think of my grandparents as being parents, before they were my grandma and grandpa.  It is even weirder to think of myself as a parent, and not only as a child and a grandchild, and that now I have added another generation to this every growing chain of four generations in my family.

In life, we seem only to be given many good things, but maybe not all of them. I was lucky enough to be given a wonderful family.  My grandparents got married on June 6, 1945.  The family started with two people, on that day. Two farm kids that lived through the depression, who got married when my Grandpa was on leave from the Navy.  Back when a man was a man, and worked with his hands and a woman was a woman, who's role was to work in the home, and raise the children.

So much has changed since that time.  Ian and I live together, but we aren't married. For the last two years, up until recently, my job has supported us while I go to work in corporate America. There were months at a time when Ian would stay home with the kids, watching Lauren all day and helping Audrey with her homework when she got off of the bus.  He still does all of the cooking, and always will.  It makes me wonder, what else will have chaged by the time my Lauren decides to get married? How will it be for her?

For as much as times have changed, I realized by writing this speech what has stayed the same: no matter how it gets done, people want the best for their kids. They want them to have a happy childhood, to have trips to remember and traditions that they upheld. My mom has so many fond memories of her childhood. Trips to Niagara Falls, Chicago, camping, learning to ice skate, riding ponies.  I realize that Ian and I are doing the exact same things that my grandparents did: trying to give our kids the best childhood that we can, through trips to Disney World and Kentucky Lake and mini-adventures of ice skating and whatever else we dream up and can afford at the same time.

All I know is that I am thankful that God gave me a partner to go through this life with: a good man that wants the best for his kids. I had to look a little further than my grandparents did. They went to the same school growing up. Let's just say I had to kiss a few more frogs to find my prince than grandma did. But I found him. That's all that matters. If we have half the marriage that my grandparents have had, we will have been more than lucky.

♥ V :)