Saturday, August 26, 2017

Happy 45th birthday Kris!


This picture is from Kristen's first birthday party.  We had the party at Nan and Dot's house because my Aunt Dot was recovering from falling down the attic stairs and was still too sore to ride in the car.

My Aunt Ettie was there and gave her the present that is right in front of her.  For some reason Kristen was afraid of it and wanted to get out of her chair!  Maybe the present was too big.

I have always loved that picture; so glad that we captured that cute little face on film!

The present was a blue horse that you ride on (you can see it on the table in the picture below).





She was fine with it after it was unwrapped.

Happy birthday Kris!

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Happy Birthday Big Baba!



I have always loved this picture of Paul's Dad, Big Baba.  It was taken on Thanksgiving Day 2003.  It is hard to get a picture of him looking at the camera, never mind smiling!

I miss GG, and I miss Dot before Alzheimer's.

Happy 89th birthday Big Baba!

Thursday, August 17, 2017

Throwback Thursday - Our backyard 44 years later!

I have been systematically going through our photo albums lately trying to digitize photos.  I'll never get through all of them, but I am trying to get to the pictures that tell a story.  I am on #3 of 33 photo albums, and that is only since Paul and I got married.  I also have a ton of earlier albums, from both sides of the family.

I have spent a lot of time digitizing older photos of our ancestors and trying to tell their stories, but I also want to do Paul's and my pictures too.

We bought our house in April, 1973.  Kristen was almost 8 months old.

We live on a circle with 26 houses.  Our neighborhood was built on farm land; a strawberry patch.  There were only a couple of large trees which must have been on the edge of the land.  Our house is on the inside of the circle, so the back yards didn't have any boundaries.  One of our friends said it was like living in a fish bowl!

This picture, taken about 6 months after we moved in, was taken in our back yard across to our neighbor's house behind us.



This is our back yard today.  Our neighbors, Jack and Judy, planted pine trees across their back yard, and we planted forsythia.  In 2015 Judy took down the pine trees, and we lost our tree a month later due to some type of disease. Between our tree down, and her trees down, the forsythia have really taken off and gotten very thick and tall.





This picture was taken looking down the middle of the inside of our circle from our back yard in October 1973. 





Eventually everyone started putting up fences and planting trees and hedges.  This is what it looks like now.  We can't even see the hill which used to be so pretty in the fall.  


Out of the 26 houses on this circle, there are 6 original families left.  It's been a wonderful place to live!


Saturday, August 12, 2017

August 2017 Scrapbook Pages

Going to the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield for our annual Barrington Stage Youth Theater outing. This was Marley's 6th time, and Mason's 3rd. Great day!