This photo is of my Grandpa and Grandma Thompson and all of their grandchildren in the summer of 1996.  The family had all gathered at their house to celebrate their wedding anniversary.

My grandpa had been ill for some time and we all knew that he might not live to celebrate their 50th anniversary so we gathered for their 49th anniversary.  We had a bar-b-que and all of us had a happy day remembering when we were little kids and how are lives were changing.

Little did we know about the changes to come to all of us in the next decade!  Now I can look back and see how very blessed we all were then!  Hindsight is definitely much clearer than the view from the other side.

Grandpa died in May of 1997 and didn’t make it to his 50th anniversary so I am very glad that we all gathered for his anniversary.  He was still well enough to enjoy the day and be happy that his grandchildren had all come to celebrate with him.

Except for funerals, this is probably the last time all his grandchildren have been in one place at the same time.  Our lives are much different now.  Many of us have watched the declining health of our parents while we watched the next generation join our family.  There were marriages, divorces, births and deaths for all of us to experience.

Grandpa didn’t get to enjoy many of his great-grandchildren only a few of them were born before his death.   Grandma saw more of their births and the beginnings of their lives before she followed him in death in 2006.

Sentimental Sunday is a daily blogging prompt used by many genealogy bloggers to help them post content on their sites.

To participate in Sentimental Sunday, simply create a post in which you discuss a sentimental story or memory about an ancestor, or maybe even a family tradition that touches you.