Each of the last five years we have intended to send a letter thanking each of you for coming to our dinner.  This year without the distraction of graduate school or very small children, we have the luxury of time to properly express our gratitude for your friendship.

We believe that there are moments and events in life when the universe shifts and there is life before and life after.  For us when Ed passed away it was one of those defining moments.  Perhaps it was the fact that we had just become parents or that Pumpkin Shoot was just the week before, or maybe it was that Jim lived so close at the time that we were together more or maybe it just was the realization that it could have been any number of people in our lives taken from us.  As we painfully went thought the next week we said to each other, more than once, that we needed to make seeing our friends, being there for our friends and appreciating our friends, a priority.

The first dinner was small.  It was a way to come together and be together during what we expected to be a tough time.  This dinner has grown tremendously and reunites lots of people each year.  And each year there are new faces!  And now more children! It has become our way of saying thanks to all the special people in our lives.  It is our once a year to gather everyone and appreciate the gift that each of you is in our lives.  We realize how blessed we are to have so many amazing friends.  Thank you.

While we can’t promise that Oktoberfest will be on tap every year, we do promise to continue with this tradition and watch it grow.

This year was smaller than other years, and that was fine.  We spent time thinking of those who have been there in the past and have moved to other parts of the country.  It was very nice.  It was a way of realizing all that has happened to all of us and how extraordinary the gift of friendship is in our lives.