Everything is Golden

First 50 Years.  Can't quite believe it, but we celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary last week.  It doesn't seem like it has been nearly that long.    

Celebrating our first 50 years at Prairie House Restaurant. 

We celebrated at Prairie House Restaurant, a remodeled feed store founded in 1886 and operated continuously by the same family for 124 years.  We even shopped there once upon a time.  Due to failing health by key members, the family that owned the store closed it down.  It has since been remodeled and was reopened as a restaurant in 2018.  It is an interesting place especially for Old Town Lewisville, with lots of memorabilia from its days as a feed store.

We have many memories from lots of adventures over the past 50 years.  Much of the photographic proof is not yet in digital format, but here are a few pictures that were already digitized or that I could easily find and scan.

 Our Wedding.

Gwen joins the family.

 

The Frog and Gwen (11 weeks old) working on the computer.  

 

Gwen at 5 months checking out the computer print-outs.

 

The Move to Texas.

 

Landscaping 1984?, the "Thousand Weekend Project"

Building the spa deck, 1988

Misc. Trips.  We went on numerous family trips, including Galveston (1985 and 1987), San Francisco (1988), Chattanooga (1988), Colorado Springs (1989), Disney World (1990), and Durango/Santa Fe (1991).  We have pictures somewhere, but most are not yet digitized.

hatanooga

Gwen at Mesa Verde, 1991

Those trips were certainly memorable, but we remember this time more due to the many many school related activities: OM competitions,  high school football games, band contests, Decathlon and so much more.

Empty Nesters.  In 1996 Gwen became an Owl and we became empty nesters.  Those four years flew by in a flash.  Before we knew it there was graduation, 

 

Graduation 2000

followed almost immediately by Gwen and Paul's wedding.    

More Trips.  About this time we became very active in geocaching, which had us exploring various parts of the state most weekends.  That included hiking such places as Enchanted Rock State Park and Palo Duro Canyon State Park, not to mention many many local parks we had previously not known existed.

We also took several larger trips.    

Tower of London, 2001

 

Backpacking Trip to South Rim, Big Bend National Park, 2004

 

Grand Canyon National Park, 2007, part of Silver's Maiden Voyage

Carlsbad Caverns, 2013.  This was part of the trip to Trinity Site, White Sands and more.

We also had trips to Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Yosemite and multiple points in between.

A 50th Anniversary Trip.  Many people try to do a major trip for their 50th anniversary.  Rather than wait until our 50th anniversary, we decided several years ago to go ahead and travel while we still could.  We squeezed in three epic trips after finally making it through the pandemic:  Alaska, Galapagos, and the most epic of all Tanzania.  

 

Lamplugh Glacier, Glacier Bay National Park, August 2022

  

Tagus Cove, Isabela Island (one of the Galapagos Islands), May 2023

 

Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, September 2024

Moving Forward.  That brings us more or less to the present.  We talked about possible other trips, but it was hard to get too excited about anything given some of our mobility issues and the hassles of traveling due to other health problems.  Could we travel?  Yes, but we had done the big trips that we had really looked forward to doing.  Everything else just seemed like too much trouble right now.  We know we might change our minds, but instead of more trips we decided to look into adopting some cats.  

We have had multiple generations of cats over the years.  Our last cat died in May, 2016.  At that time we decided we would not replace him until we were finished with much of the traveling we hoped to do.  It seemed like we might be to that point now, so we went looking for possible kittens to adopt.  We came home Sunday, May 24, with two six-week old orange tabbies, Benji and Tatoo.    

Benji and Tatoo

They are brothers from the same litter that are identical except for a tiny amount of black fur at the tip of Tatoo's right ear.

 

The 50th Wedding Anniversary is normally considered the "Golden Anniversary".  Although not planned, these two little golden fur balls seem to fit with the theme.  Stay tuned for more on these little (and I do mean little!) balls of energy coming soon.