This is personal and for my memory here on my blog. Our Daughter-in-love, Laura, put requests out to my friends and family to make a little video greeting for my 70th. She gathered them all and put them together in this 26 minute video and then surprised me with it after our family dinner in Spokane back in 2021. We all watched it together at Dan and Jamie’s house cast onto their TV. It is so meaningful to me and brings tears to my eyes as I recount the goodness of the Lord to me by giving me loving family and friends.
I’m finally adding it on my blog 5 years later!
Thank you, Laura and thank you to each one of you who took the time to deal with the internets and the recording and sending your clips to Laura!
My extended family will often sing when we are together and two of our favorites to sing are Great is Thy Faithfulness and Bless Thou the Lord. You’ll hear those songs at the beginning and at the end of the video.
But wait…that’s not all. This is another video put together from a very old reel to reel from Greg and my church wedding shower. My brother in law, Nick filmed it. It took place in 1974 at Bethany Baptist Church in Los Angeles. No one will love this video as much as I do. Our kids showed it to us at our Family 50th wedding anniversary weekend in Walla Walla in 2024. There is no sound and the quality is poor but the memories are priceless. Both my maternal and paternal grandmothers are in the footage and they both gave us their blessing and how I wish there was audio for those words. It was our little Russian Baptist church tradition to have this church shower with both the Bride and Groom present. This is where the wedding gifts were given, not brought to the wedding. Greg’s parents and my parents were present along with Greg’s Brother and his family. A few other men were present like my uncle Paul because they were the chauffeurs. My brothers were there and brother in laws. You’ll see them in the kitchen helping with the dishes.
So many of the people in this footage have passed away. The church is still in existence in Los Angeles.
Note: It was so much fun to watch this with our kids and to fill in some commentary on our own. Hilarious with belly laughs. Thank you, Josh and Laura, for sending off the reel to get it in a visible format.
Here are some stills from our shower which aren’t the best quality either.
My paternal grandmother in the background with the pink and my maternal grandmother in the blue.
Thanks for going down this rabbit hole with me.
I’m working on my posts from our trip to California and will share them soon.
The Happy Wonderer ~ ellen b. 