Whose 50-Year Reunion?

 We spent the next few days after the 4th in SL working and then the afternoon of Friday the 7th, we drove up to Idaho for Kristen's 50 year class reunion.  It's hard to believe that it has been 50 years since high school.
We dropped our stuff off at Kathy and Brent's in Blackfoot and then drove to Idaho Falls, where one of our classmates, Jerry Hong hosted and cooked a Chinese buffet in his back yard.  His family came directly from China and they owned and operated the Chinese restaurant in Blackfoot for many years called the Cathay Cafe.  Jerry worked there so he said cooking the dinner was not a problem.  He furnished it at no cost to us.  He had asked me to MC the event both nights.  On Friday night, I asked a lot of questions like who has been married the longest, who is driving the oldest cars, etc.  We had fun with that and gave away a lot of candy bars.  We gave 100 grands to all of those who had served in the military and honored them.

 My good friends, Roland and Pat, were married the longest.  They got married at the very end of the school year and have started on their 51st year of marriage.

Here are the committee members who worked so diligently to put the reunion together.  Jerry is in the middle of the pack wearing a red shirt.

I belonged to a group of friends that started in Jr High.  I don't remember exactly how it got started but there were 10-12 of us most of the time.  Other classmates nicknamed us "The Brain Train," but we never called ourselves that.  All of the valedictorians were members of our group but not everyone was "brainy," but all were pretty diligent students. Pat, in the pink shirt, sent out an email inviting anyone who wanted to attend a session in the newly remodeled IF temple to meet in the chapel at 10:30 for the 11 o'clock session.  Eight of us were able to spend a couple of hours together in the temple,  form a circle of hugs in the celestial room and join up in the cafeteria for lunch afterward.  Two other friends who weren't able to attend the reunion would have also joined with us if they could.  I think that is pretty amazing that after 55 years, we would all be able to meet together in rejoicing in God's holy temple.  It pays to pick good friends.

 Below are Kristen, Pat and Becky.  Becky, Joyce and Jane were roommates with me at Ricks College.

 Here I am with Carolyn Huff Snyder.  She won the prize for driving the oldest car.  She still owns her original vehicle from high school and drives it on occasion.  How fun is that?

 Joyce connected with one of our friends from AZ who couldn't attend.  We had fun chatting with Lucy on FaceTime.

 One of the final acts of the 2nd evening of our reunion was to crown a king and queen of the event.  We actually had a live band playing music from the 60's so Jerry Hong and Linda Kariya, the two who did the most work for the reunion, graciously allowed us to crown them and did a dance together.  We had a fun time hanging out with the gray hairs, no hairs and those who pay their hairdressers a lot of money.  For our next reunion in 5 years, we plan to meet together with Steve's class.  Each class had over 60 classmates who have passed away.  That was a sobering reality.

We drove back to CV that night after the dinner as we already had guests at our house.  More about that on the next post.