Happy 30th!

Well, one of the important events that I haven't posted on yet was the fact that John and I celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary last week, January 12th. Thirty years is practically a lifetime, I'm told.

I was in Grand Rapids on that day, babysitting for my new little grandson, Jasper (oh, goodness--another important thing that happened during my hiatus). Jeff and Elaine bought us a balloon bouquet and gave us a nice card. But on top of that, Jeff and John had conspired and made reservations at a wonderful restaurant in Grand Rapids called The Melting Pot. Jeff and Elaine had been there and told me about it, and it was really somewhere I wanted to go some day. So my thoughtful son passed on that information, and it was a deal! And for helping them out and taking care of the baby during the next few weeks, they also furnished us with a gift card that went a long way to help pay for the occasion.

The menu called it "The Big Night Out", a four-course fondue dinner. First course, chunks of bread, raw veggies, and Granny Smith apples dunked in the cheeses of our choice, melted in a pot right there at our table. Second course, a cobb salad--the only part of the dinner that wasn't fondue. Third course, of course, was the main course--about 6 different types of meat and a bowl of vegetables to skewer and cook in our choice of flavored oil. Many different sauces were arranged on the table to use, but of course we quickly forgot which one went with what.

And then to top all that off, the last course was the chocolate fondue! They had many options, but we went with dark chocolate with pecans. There were bananas, strawberries, marshmallows, brownies, rice krispie treats, angel food and cheesecake a-plenty to drown in the wonderful hot chocolate. My favorite course, of course!

We asked our waitress to take our picture, and then we took a few ourselves. Little did we know that we both still had remnants of chocolate on our lips for later!

Happy 30 years with hopefully many more to come!