Sixty Years

My parents will celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary later this summer.

Sixty years!

Sixty years ago, Father Knows Best was a popular TV show and Elvis Presley had just cut his first record. Gas cost 29 cents. Period. Not preceded by four dollars. You could get a house for about ten grand and a car for roughly $1700. The words "under God" were added to the Pledge of Allegiance, the Tonight Show first aired on NBC, and White Christmas was a hit movie. John Travolta was born and Swanson introduced TV dinners.

And my parents were married.

Last week, my whole family got together for the first time ever...for a family vacation. My sister from Kansas drove out with her husband and their daughter. My sister from Indianapolis headed north with her husband. And of course, Ryan and I packed far more luggage than two people need for a long weekend, and we all met up in Shipshewana, along with my parents, to celebrate this milestone.

We did a lot of eating...

{That was from our dinner at the Blue Gate Restaurant in Shipshewana}

We did a lot of shopping...

Some of us went on a bike ride...

...and got soaked in a downpour...

..and I fell in love with a little guy...

...we recreated pictures from 1986:

...OH!! And we photobombed my mom's new phone and waited to see how long it would take her to find the pictures...

It was a priceless moment when she found them.

It really was the best weekend. We had fun, and I decided family vacations are a good thing.

Thankful today to be in this line of heritage:

It all began 60 years ago with these two:

Thankful for these girls I've shared life with {even if from a distance because I showed up late to the party}:

Thankful for the world's best niece and the grown-up friendship we now share:

And I'm thankful for the way my parents prepared me to be part of this thing called marriage:

And I'll take sixty-plus years of my own with Ryan!