Dudley and Beverly Anderson

Today we went down to Dudley and Beverly Anderson's 50th wedding anniversary party. By we, I mean my brood as well as Em and Jeff. Again, mom wasn't feeling good - all pukey - so, dad stayed home with her. Let me just tell you a little bit about this family. These are friends of ours from our Royal Center days. Honestly, they are more than friends. They are like family to us. I could seriously start a blog all about my memories of our time with these incredible people. There isn't enough room to list everything they've done for us and with us. But, just to give you an idea of what they were like.....We would spend every Easter with them. Beverly would make ham. We'd eat in the basement (their awesome, fantastic basement!) and play board games all afternoon. We'd laugh and laugh until our sides hurt! Every December, we would exchange gifts. I can almost relay to you every gift they gave us over the years. For us kids, it was about as exciting as Christmas itself! It was always something completely fantastic and we would sit their eagerly waiting to see what treasure they had for us! They had a pool that we would visit as often as mom would let us. All she had to do was call and see if we could come and I doubt they ever turned us down. We spent so much time with them both, as well as their kids, that our whole childhood is filled with memories of them. They are also the ones that came with us when my Grandma Roper died. My grandma lived in PA. Yet, they came to love her as we did and when she passed, they drove out the 10 hrs. and helped us kids deal with that loss. The first ones we had ever experienced. I remember Beverly sitting with me outside the room where my grandma laid and comforted me as I cried. She had cancer and I was so afraid to see what the cancer had done to her. I was worried she'd look scary and I didn't want to go in. She sat with me and told me how good Grandma looked and she and mom helped me go inside and see her. That's the type of people they are. It wasn't always about the presents or the pool, it was about their kindness and love for us kids. Just amazing people. People you can't duplicate. People you only come across once in a lifetime.



This is their family. They had 4 kids: Amy, Mark, Janet, and Sue. Janet and Sue were teenagers when we moved to Royal Center, so we got to know them the most. They were the coolest people ever! I idolized them! Sue had braces, so I asked mom if I could have braces when I was in 2nd grade. Didn't get them until 7th. ;-) When Janet would sell stuff in a garage sale, I would save up my quarters and buy it. Didn't matter that I was 7 and she was 17. I wore it with pride! I still remember buying a pair of clogs, that probably wouldn't even fit me today, and I wore them when I was in like 1st grade. I wore them to my friend's house and would clop all the way down the sidewalk to see her in these shoes that were too big and knew I looked cool the whole time! As you can see in the picture, their family has grown from 4 kids to include 3 son-in-laws and 5 beautiful grandkids.

When we got to the party, we arrived just in time to see them renew their vows. Beverly didn't know a thing about it and was so surprised. It was so sweet! Still as much in love as they were all those years ago. :-)

I took some pictures of the books and snapshots they had on display. Really fun looking back and seeing how their family has grown.

This is their oldest daughter Amy and her husband. I haven't seen Amy in ages and it was so fun getting a chance to say hi.

When we were there, we also ran into a few other Royal Center friends. Friends we hadn't seen since we left 15 yrs ago! It was so fun!!!! This is my old youth leaders - Monty and Cathy Moss. I swear, they haven't changed a bit in the 15 yrs since we saw them last. Em and I had such fun chatting with them and seeing how they were doing.

These are more RC friends. You'll see Cathy Moss again on the left, and then next to her is Brenda Goodrich, Rae Bonnell, and Karen Link. Again, all people we haven't seen since we left. Rae came up to us first and said, "I don't know if you'll remember who I am.". I told her she looked familiar, but as soon as she told me who she was, I knew instantly! Her youngest boy was the same age as Micah. They had a really cool fort thing on the top of this really high platform then had a cable that went from the fort down to the ground that you could slide on. Micah loved it, but I was too afraid of heights to try it out. But, she and her family were always terrific friends! Brenda I knew right away. I used to babysit her kids when I was a teen. Her family moved when I was going into jr. high, I believe, and I was so sad! I loved her kids to pieces. They were awesome! Heck, so was Brenda and her husband Barry! More really great friends of ours. Karen started coming to our church towards the end of our time there. She used to help in AWANA and was super nice!

This is Rae again with her husband Jeff. Man, it was good to see them! Jeff's dad owned the golf course that my dad went to all the time. Every Christmas they'd get dad a membership to the club there and let me tell you, he used that membership every chance he got! He loved it out there. Actually, he just took Jeff (my brother-in-law) this past summer to golf there, I believe. Fun stuff!

This is Sue and Janet, the youngest two girls. The ones I mentioned above that I idolized. They are just as fabulous today as they were 25 yrs ago! I could sit and chat with them all day. Janet is a riot. This was the first time I had seen Sue probably since Em's high school graduation. It had been quite a while, so it was way too much fun getting to sit and chat with her. We've already made plans to get together at Janet's next time Sue is in town. Can't wait!

Lastly, this is a picture Em took of us before we left to go to Winamac for the party. Thought since we were all dressed up and actually had another person there to take the picture, we might as well take advantage. :-)

And, this is Em and I. Jeff took our picture together. Guess we were both standing there and looked all Christmasy in our coats, so he wanted to take a quick pic. :-)

So, that's our fun time. A celebration of two incredible people, that came together 50 yrs ago, had 4 wonderful kids and became life-long, true friends of ours. What a day!