I accompanied my mother to the annual cousins’ lunch. The cousins took up three tables, and had a lot of conversation. Then we played a simple card game led by Delores and her husband. I do enjoy the Whitmores and their card games.
I took the picture of the group, and grabbed a few shots as they were getting set up.
I tried to get them away from that window, but there were too many cousins.
So we can see some of them.
When we sold my aunt’s house, we moved all her photo albums over to my mom’s house. My mom and I took my aunt out to lunch today, and I brought along one of the photo albums to look at.
But what’s this thing sticking out of the top of the album?
It’s a note! That might as well be addressed to me.
The picture in question:
My aunt and I are in agreement; and I’m glad I found this note before it was time to write her obituary.
Worry not, readers, you have not missed the DRT Part I post. I didn’t take any pictures, so there is no post. On Saturday, my mother and Aunt Pat went to Findley Sunset to decorate my grandparents’ grave with flowers from my aunt’s yard. The older generation has aged out of multiple cemetery trips, so I rode my bike over to Rose City Cemetery early this morning to decorate the graves there.
Basil and Basiliky got a rope full of origami flowers I had been folding over the past few months.
I like how everything turned out.
I then headed to the mausoleum for Uncle Tom’s decoration, but alas, I was too much of an early bird.
The posted hours begin at 9:00, and I was far from that time.
I checked around on the outside and found a good spot in Mabel Collins. She got Uncle Tom’s origami flower arrangement.
I’m pleased with how these turned out too. That white flower is especially pretty, but it’s a hard one to fold, which is why there is only one. I folded it on recycled paper because I was practicing.
Here I am measuring the vase size to prepare for next year.
I spent the summer scanning my grandfather’s slides. The vast majority of them were 35mm, and could be scanned with the slide scanner I bought. But there were a few large format ones and a few of other sizes that just didn’t work in my scanner.
So those, I dropped off for scanning. In less than a week I had them back and stored on a handy USB drive. Most of them are from the early 60s, when my mom and aunts were still in high school. So it’s fun to see new pictures of them when they were young.
Note my grandmother’s label, slides, and that it is affixed with cellophane tape.
My mom celebrated her newest birthday with pizza at Pizza Caboose, and a black and white cake. That would be a chocolate cake with a chocolate fudge filling and vanilla bean buttercream frosting.
As you can see, I could have done a little more planning before I started decorating. Both the sideways day and the numeral one could have come out better.
In good news, it all tastes the same, and it was delicious.
I’ve been going through the slides at 7611 and scanning ones with people. Most of the slides were from my grandfather’s photographic efforts. He did love a landscape. And he usually captured people from far, far away. Pictures of indoor parties center the people a good 20 feet away giving a clear view of the full table, people’s backs, and off in the background, people’s faces. “Walk closer, grandpa!” I mutter to myself as I’m sorting.
The love of landscape and very far away people is expertly captured in this picture from New Hampshire in the 70s. Who are those people? I will have to zoom in to find out. But look at that tree in full fall color!
It’s been a tough year with many traditions shifting. We gathered for a Christmas meal. The mission: bring your favorite frozen food item.
We had a good (though salty) meal and Linda smartly interpreted the mission to include Salt and Straw ice cream, which we had for dessert.
After that, Matt and I went home and paid $19.89 to watch the Eras Tour (with bonus songs).
It was a nice, if muted, holiday.
I attended a matinee performance with my mother and aunt.
This featured the music of Fats Waller and I especially appreciated Antonia Darlene, Troy A. Jackson, and Jai Shane’s singing.
I didn’t, however, love the song “Fat and Greasy.” It was also the song in the play where they encouraged the audience to sing along. There were a lot of fat people in the audience. I wonder how it sat with them?
Or as we call at the Orange Door “Fours!” (Tim Riggins on Friday Night Lights remains a very quotable character, all these years later)
The mothers, Matt, and I celebrated by going out to eat at The Old Spaghetti Factory and then eating Triple Chocolate Cheesecake. Which was delicious!
For mom’s second birthday during Covid, we got her a flocking. The night before, Think Pink Flamingo Flocking set up these friends to surprise her.
We were hoping she wouldn’t hear them and she didn’t. I also learned that my mom doesn’t put up the shades in her front room at the crack of dawn. Her excited phone call came much later than I would have thought.
This was a very fun gift and that was before I saw that the flamingos were wearing hats and stuff. Those additions made it much more fun.
I also made her one two-layer cake that I cut into four pieces and frosted so she could freeze three of them and defrost as needed. When you aren’t having a big gathering, a whole cake is kind of a lot.
And here are the frosted cakes! Even though I made five cups of frosting, you will note that the frosting diminishes as the cakes go along. I forgot that more sides means more frosting.
They are all plated on 8×8 dishes because we had no cardboard I could cover with aluminum foil.
It was a fun birthday celebration.
