Party On

Our family has a lot of big events occurring in 2012. Jim's mom and dad celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary early this year, his older sister turns 60 later this year, his younger sister turns 50, and Katie turns 21. Add to that the fact that Katie graduated from college and Megan just received her master's degree, and you have plenty of reasons to party. (Jim also has received an amazing accolade, but we are not allowed to talk about it until the national announcement is made, so more on that later.) Since we are all spread out, we decided to have one big celebration over Memorial Day weekend.

My in-laws including Jim's sister and her husband drove down on Friday, and Katie flew in Friday night. Andy and Megan flew in on Saturday afternoon as Megan had her last class Saturday morning. Jim's younger sister and her fiance come over from Kansas City on Sunday morning as they had a wedding to attend on Saturday. We had a barbeque in our backyard Sunday afternoon, which of course had to be the hottest day of the year so far. Thank goodness it was breezy and fairly low humidity, as we were able to sit outside most of the day.

We hired Jim's motorcycle buddy, Jim Diaz, to take some photos before the party began. Jim is a professional photographer, and it has been many years since we had Wolterman family portraits taken. There are too many "exes" in that group shot to warrant keeping the old photo on the wall. Hopefully we will get a group shot where everyone has a decent expression on their face and their eyes open. We shall see.

The party was a great success, and it was wonderful to have Jim's whole family together. Frankly I don't know when my children will be together at the same time with their grandparents in the future. Jim's folks had not been here since Katie graduated from high school in 2009. So this weekend was all the more special because of that. The pictures will help us keep the memories alive.