Help us Celebrate 50 years of marriage with Dan and Regina!

Hey everyone, thanx for your help in celebrating Dan and Regina's 50th Anniversary! Our hope is to raise enough funds to send them on a vacation, which they haven't really had in years. We hope to present the gift to them at the celebration that Jason and Kim will be hosting on November 23rd. The actual anniversary is on the 28th, but as that falls on Thanksgiving, we will be celebrating them the weekend before.

Some background on the blissful 50 years: Dan and Regina met in high school in Wisconsin. Being from sunny California, my mom really loved it there! By 17 and 18 in the 70's, they ended up pregnant with Michelle, and dad ran away to the army. He did come back to make an honest woman out of mom, albeit 7-8 months pregnant and as big as a house. Michelle was born in Wisconsin in January, soon after they joined dad on the army base in Tennessee, mom LOVED it there even more(LOL)! Jason was born in December, Irish twinsies, in a hospital in Kentucky. Lucky for me, they found their way back to California, where I was born almost 2 years after Jason.

We moved up to the San Jose area in the early 80's, where we were raised to adulthood, or some semblance of it. Around 2000 Dan and Regina were able to buy a property in the San Diego area, where they lived for about 10 years, very happily. They had a beautiful house with the horses in the back yard for the first time in their lives (moms dream). Around 2007 they bought a Scuba Diving company, Dad loves diving. The housing crisis unfortunately happened the next year, and as hard as they tried, they were forced to sell both the business and the house. Around 2010 they came back to the bay area, where Jason and I were (Michelle was in Australia making babies).

Since returning to the bay area mom and dad have had to rent. They also have had to find new careers/jobs, which took time. Dad got his electricians license, which he's been doing for almost 10 years now, but in his 60's is getting more difficult. Mom found a job with a party planning company, which she loved. Then came 2020 and the pandemic, mom's company sold to a business that only kept 2 out of 30 employees. Mom once again was forced to start over. Dad was able to work through the pandemic and mom had some government assistance which really helped them. Once the help ran out mom had not successfully found work and they got behind on their rent. In 2023, they were able to pay their back due rent with some rental assistance. Mom was not able to find and start a job until about May of that year, when they fell behind one more month their landlord evicted them. It did take some time for the eviction to go through, but in the Spring of this year they had to be out. They currently are not able to rent and are living in an extended stay, even though they both have good jobs and income. Also, in December we lost my grandma, dad's mom, grandma Dawn. Mom and dad had plane tickets and plans to visit Wisconsin in 2020, before grandma slipped into full Alzheimer's. I don't remember the last time my dad got to see his mom before that. They did go back for the service because they still had the tickets, but this isn't how it should have gone.

So through all of this Dan and Regina are still together, 50 years plus, 3 kids, 11 grandkids and a million animals later. They've been the most supportive parents through our lives, and they've pretty much been parents for their entire marriage. They've been parents to so many kids that were not their own, neighborhood kids, 4-H kids and our friends. They've given multiple people a place to live since I was very little, someone lived on our couch or shared one of our rooms for many years of my life. I didn't think much of it when I was young, but I realize better as an adult how loving and caring a gesture it is to have non family (sometimes family) members living in your house even when there isn't really space. We love them so much and appreciate all of their kindness over the years to us and to everyone around them. Despite their hard times right now, we hope that this gesture lifts them up and gives them hope that better times are coming, for all of us! Thank you for taking the time to read this if you made it to the end. Any little bit will help, if 100 people give $5 that's $500, while we hope to raise more, anything is something!!!

Love,

Michelle, Jason and Julie