Tonight my mother and father-in-law arrived to stay with us for a few days.  They came down from their farm in Idaho to visit us so they could come to see their son (my husband) tomorrow night when he will be singing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir at the Conference Center in Salt Lake City.  The way the choir thing came about was that I was at a charity event one night with my daughter as my date and they had a silent auction to raise money for the Huntsman Cancer Center.  When I saw that one of the auction items was for the opportunity to sing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir I knew that I just had to buy it as a gift for my husband.

My husband has been singing his entire life.  In fact at the age of 7 he was attending a rodeo in Idaho when he broke through the security gate onto the field to ask the announcer of the Rodeo if he could have the microphone to sing a song to the entire stadium of people.  The announcer was stunned and asked the crowd how they felt about that. The crowd went wild cheering to let this little boy have the microphone. So Rollin took the microphone from him and proceeded to sing at the top of his lungs the audience.  That became the first of many performances he gave in singing with choirs and in theaters.  He even had the opportunity to sing once at Carnegie Hall in New York as a teenager.   His entire family sings and they all have amazing musical talent.  The first family reunion after we were married we were at a park with his extended family when the family suddenly burst into song – I was shocked – they sounded almost as good as MoTab, with even the smallest grandchildren joining in the harmonies.  Yes, music is a passion and  I knew that the best Christmas gift I could give my husband was to get him this chance to sing with the most famous choir in the world – MoTab!  So Thursday night he will be joining them for the 7:45pm concert at the Concert Center and we are super excited to go and see it.  The concert is open to the public so we will be in the crowd cheering and taking photos for the memory books.  It will be a once in a lifetime opportunity.

My husband’s parents are two of the cutest people on the planet!  I adore them so much.  And as we sat visiting with them tonight I couldn’t help but think to myself, “I hope we will be that cute when we are 80!”  Seriously, they are the cutest couple.  They are so in love still and so fun and sassy with each other.  They don’t just love and respect each other, they genuinely enjoy one another and you can see the fun that exists in their relationship.  They laugh and tease and give each other cute looks across the room.  They are SO CUTE!!!

Watching them I realized that they are the model of what to strive to be like when we are older.  That is the relationship to build with your spouse.  One of fun and humor and sass, and playful, and kind, and considerate, and loving and sweet.  Logic would say that it probably wasn’t always perfect between them, no couple I have ever met is ever perfect, but after having 11 children together, burying one of those children at the age of 7 and one at the age of 29, and raising their family which expanded to a large number of grand-children, and serving as service missionaries together in Kenya, Africa, these two adorable people have cornered the market on how to be that cute little couple that is still very much in love in their old age. Their example of love for each other is one for all of us to try and follow.

Here is to being cute when we are all in our 80’s 🙂

~Amy