50th Anniversary

This is a long overdue post. My parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary this August. What a wonderful milestone to celebrate! Congratulations Mom and Dad. They had a wonderful party in Harmony, MN - our hometown. They hosted a dance.

For those who don't know, my parents are wonderful old-time polka dancers. Waltz, schottische, that kind of thing. And they are good! They travel throughout the Midwest to polka fests. Our girls have had a fun time learning these dances with Grandma and Grandpa, so they had so much fun dancing - for about 5 hours straight.

There were two bands. Leroy Larson and the Scandinavian Ensemble started out - a nice 3 piece ensemble. Mostly background music, but a few danced to them too. Very danceable. At their break, we had an Irish dance exhibition. Reed and I played - button accordion and piano - while our four Irish dancers hoofed. We had been practicing for a long time. Still had a few clinkers, but we did ok - Reed and I, that is. The girls were rock-solid, as usual. We did a jig set, a reel set, a hornpipe and a treble reel. Most of the guests had not seen Irish dancing like this. Some may have seen Riverdance. The girls were well received and got many nice compliments.

Later on, the 7-piece polka band from Cashton, Wisconsin started up - Brian and the Mississippi Valley Dutchmen. My dad has often talked about this band, how much he likes them, how good they are. This was our first time hearing them live, and they were REALLY good. Very fun to dance to. Lots of people at the party were dancers, so the dance floor was pretty much full all night. Yes, Reed and I actually got out there a few times too. The girls requested the bunny hop. The chicken dance also came up. Boy, I haven't done that for years.

The Irish dancers were requested for another performance, so we did our little 15 min show again. Brian played from 6-9. Our girls had been dancing since about 5pm and around 8:15 they had hit the wall. We had to go home. We were beat. But had such a great time.

My mom, sisters, aunt and nephew made TONS of delicious Norwegian baked goods. I think my girls ate about half of them! Thanks for doing all of that baking. We were so busy talking, visiting, and getting ready for performing our own thing, that we hardly took any pictures. The ones of me any my sisters are the only two Reed took. The others are courtesy of Mom's web album.

A wonderful and memorable day.