When our oldest son got married it was a little different situation with the receptions. I think normally the wedding and reception are at the brides hometown with an open house or second reception at the grooms hometown. Christie had been raised not too far from here but her family had moved a couple states away when she was in high school. Since then she had been attending college and not been around home a great deal. I suppose those are some of the reasons why she chose to be married in

A couple years ago my in-laws were about to celebrate their 50 years of marriage. They are quiet people and had no expectation of any kind of party in their behalf. A few days after they celebrated the 49th anniversary their children began to talk……we needed to have a party!

Knowing our family and knowing my husbands parents the only thing that had to be included in the party was family and friends. We didn’t need fancy decorations or a catered dinner, we just needed to give them an evening

Last saturday we had a family reunion. It’s my husbands family, actually I guess it’s his fathers family. The reunion has had many starts and stops over the years, very hit and miss, but this generation seems to be taking it a bit more seriously, we’ve actually had 2 in a row!

We hold the reunion every other year, sometimes we go somewhere and sometimes we hold it at a family members home. This year my father in law and my sister in law, (hereinafter referred to as my sister) organized the

I was watching TV the other night and saw a commercial for a program about kids birthday parties. In less than 30 seconds I was absolutely disgusted! This program was about parents who were spending 10’s sometimes 100’s of 1000’s of dollars on their children's birthday parties. Not all of these people were very wealthy and most of the children were quite young, some children were having their first birthday!

The parties involved petting zoos and circus acts and various venues for rent. There