Yesterday we hosted a party in celebration of my in-laws’ 50th wedding anniversary, which actually took place a bit earlier this month.

Quite a few people had a hand in putting this together. One of Ron and Barbara’s most amazing traits is their enhanced sense of community and family, which spreads out to encompass just about everyone they interact with. They have acted as surrogate parents for a host of castaways, strays, waifs and wanderers of all ages over the years, opening their home and their hearts to them. I’ve long hoped to imitate at least a pale shadow of this kind of behavior in my own life, to varying degrees of success.

Anyway, there was no shortage of enthusiastic volunteers to help with the festivities. It was a tremendous success, and a grand time was had by all. Pictures can be viewed here, and I’ll be adding to this collection as more folks contribute.

Other than helping schlepp stuff around, my primary job was to put together a slide show commemorating the guests of honor. Being who I am, I naturally waited for the night before the party to really sink my teeth into it. By about two the next morning, with my bicuspids worn down to cabochon nubs, I finally got it finished. I think it’s really quite a nice tribute, so I made it available here as a QuickTime movie. You can also download the original full-size movie here, but it’s a biggie: 150 megabytes or so. Oh, and don’t fret about the white space in the lower third of the screen: that’s an artifact of the resizing that I don’t feel like tracking down right now, and it goes away after the intro from my parents.

Here’s to you, Hammonds; many, many happy returns.

[quicktime width=”480″ height=”497″]http://www.uncle-andrew.net/blog/movies/randb50slideshow480.mov[/quicktime]