Fantastic Fifty

We had a fantastic 50th anniversary celebration! We rented a beach house in Fort Myers Beach for the week and invited our children and their families. I took this photo standing on the second floor wrap-around porch, looking toward the Gulf of Mexico. A bit of our private beach can be seen. What a pretty house! We had glass walls in our bedroom, the living room, and the dining room, with this amazing view. There were four bedrooms and four bathrooms.

This three-story house--with an elevator, which certainly helped me!--was decorated in a beach motif with fish, lighthouses, and shells. Everywhere you looked, you saw one of the three, mostly fish! We all agreed that it was overdone, and you know, fish is never good when it's overdone! Brittany counted 1,043 fish--I know, I know: hard to believe! Click here for more inside fishy photos from Sharon.

Our family did their best to top the fishy decorations with balloons and hand-written signs with sayings like,"Happy 50th ... I wish you 50 more!" and "Wow, 50 years! I don't even know dirt that old!" and "Wow, you've been married for 50 years! Congratulations!" and "50! 50! Isn't that nifty!" and "You guys have been married more years than there are fish in this house!" (of course, that was proven to be incorrect) and "Forget 'over the hill,' you guys have gone over a mountain, and you've done it together." and "50 years! Wow, you must really like each other." Jenna even had the fish magnets on the refrigerator kissing! They played music from the 50s and Johnny and I danced. Yep, we danced, a tiny bit! It was fun.


On Monday, The Golden Day, my twin brother, Binky, his wife, Rose, and son, Stephen, met us for a family dinner at Carrabba's Italian Grill. Johnny picked it! Some of us are pictured here. You can imagine, it was difficult to get us all together! As expected, the service was good, and the food was great. Of course the best thing was the family being together. It seems the older I get, the more important family is.






We all returned to the beach house to finish the evening with the most gorgeous two-tierred fiftieth anniversary cake and ice cream. With strawberry filling, it tasted even better than it looked--so moist--it was one of the best cakes ever! Family time + good food = great memories!







Johnny went out early Monday morning (THE day) and bought me my favorite flowers, red roses, along with a "golden" vase. See why I've kept him for so long?

Note the two fish swimming up the wall in the background. They were fish skeletons!





The doorbell rang and a package from good Mississippi friends came. Wow! We're so fortunate! Around mid-morning, the doorbell rang again, and we were handed this gorgeous vase of flowers from Garland and Kelli with the sweetest note that made me cry.

Oh, those huge lilies; I just love them! What is there about flowers? They make me feel so special. I couldn't stop ohhing and ahhing over them.