Category Archives: brother(s)

Nov22

50 years gone by

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Being a little girl of just 4, I don’t remember too much about this day. I know my mom and grandmom were quiet and the black and white Zenith was on all day long for several days showing coverage that  3 and 4 year old children aren’t very interested in.

Several years later, in 5th grade, I would write a paper about President Kennedy, travel to Washington, DC and then see the Kennedy grave.

Signs pointing to the graves of the Kennedys and Unknown soldiers

Grave of President Kennedy

There were some things about the assassination that I didn’t know and am sorry I had to see…like that lost film footage of the actual fatal shot.

I also didn’t know that they took seats out of Air Force One so the President wouldn’t have to go in the cargo area. Also didn’t know that Johnson wouldn’t have the plane take off without being swore in as President first. Mrs. Kennedy sat with the coffin the entire way back to the nation’s capital.

Eternal flame on Kennedy's grave

When Brian and I were first married, we traveled up to New England on a car trip that took us a week. We saw the Kennedy compound from a far in Hyannisport, MA.

Kennedy Family compound

We also went to Newport, RI and decided to see Jackie’s home ‘Hammersmith’ and took a tour. It was where she and the President had their wedding reception in 1953.

Hammersmith Estate fall 1984

Back of Hammersmith with me

These are from 1984, so not the best quality (and a scan)

Brian is the same age as Caroline and my brother is the same age as John, so you see we grew up with them. When John got killed in 1999, it was like losing a brother.

Life goes on, a new generation of this family may or may not take the limelight. Senator Ted Kennedy was the last of his generation. He was popular and outspoken until the end of his life.

Just recently Caroline became Ambassador to China. This is very interesting. She’s written several books of different genres.

I just heard the pink suit that the First Lady wore on that terrible day won’t be seen by the public until the year 2103 as requested by the family. I don’t blame them.

Mar25

Orchids were the only thing ushering in Spring around here

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On the 23rd, Brian and I met my mom and brother over at Longwood Gardens. I bite the bullet and renewed my yearly pass. I say this as I was wondering if I could do the walking there after the past few months. Actually this is bazaar thinking on my part. I ‘need’ to go there for my gardening, flowers and photo fixes. My brother just bought a pass too! He will be bringing my mom out here now. That’s pretty neat.

Brian went along too. As we were walking in, a lady ‘waved’ a ticket in front of his face and said ‘do you want a ‘free’ ticket? Before I could say anything, he said ‘no’! He said he figured I will get a free pass for him via my membership, but still, you have to pay attention to what someone is offering. 😉

It was a nice display and mom said she liked it better than the flower show.

(Brian took a lot of photos too, I can’t remember which he did and I did, so we both will take credit for these).

This was so pretty to walk in to see from the blustery, but sunshiny day:

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Yellow is one of my favorite flower colors.

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I mean ‘wow’!

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I’m a big fan of true blue flowers too! Who doesn’t love these Blue Poppies?

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I think these are African Daisies or mums?

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Did I mention I like Chartreuse too? Maybe this is a bit more lime color.

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Warm colors are nice too.

I like this one for the demo effect-look at the gardeners’ hands. LOL

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And what they were making:

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Oh I could show you 80 more photos or more! I will be uploading them to Flickr. You will see them in my sidebar there.

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A nice man took this on Brian, my mom and me.

Mom has been a bit worn out from her long walk and standing a lot, so I hope brother will push her around in a wheel chair sometimes. Can’t wait for them to see the rest of the gardens!

In the next few days, I’ll share with you our daytrip to Crystal Cave and Roadside America!

Mar11

Brilliant! A look at the 2013 Philly Flower Show

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This gallery contains 22 photos.

My brother asked if I wanted to go to the Flower Show down in Philly this year and I said fine, but I wanted Brian to come along too. We were going to take the train down from my hometown, but we would have a half hour wait and it would be 2 pm by […]

Dec25

Merry Christmas 2012

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I hope everyone got to spend time with their family and loved ones this year.

Last night we headed to my mom and brother’s house. They outdid themselves with decorating. Don’s been wanting a lighted village display for a year and started collecting them, from yard sales and eBay. they are really hard to take a photo of without a tripod, but what a great job he did.

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This is the seaport. The other one is across the room there. Then there were some on the bookcases and sofa table…and dining room!

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Mom and some of her new white tree.

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Silly dog Kelsey!

Sean’s girlfriend Mary and her daughter came over for a little bit. K. loved Kelsey and he was kissing her like crazy!

We decided to attend a midnight mass service at a Chadds Ford church. It was very nice, they had singing and a trumpet soloist, new to us. Think we’d go back!

Today we slept in, ate the hash brown casserole I made the day before. Made one for mom and Don too. As I was making these, I bit into a cookie and a tooth crown came off! I called the dentist right away and he couldn’t come into the office to glue it back in. I will probably go in on Wednesday, but the weather is suppose to be bad. My luck! Yes, I endured both Christmas eve and Christmas with this issue.

I made a nice brisket dinner with roasted veggies, mashed potatoes and sticky toffee cake. My mom and brother were suppose to come out and open their gifts and eat, but my brother wasn’t feeling well. He had made appetizers to dessert last night and also did last minute tidying up which wore him out and gave him a racing heart.  Sean was going to see his girlfriend, who lives a few towns over, so he dropped off their dinners and gifts to them. Brian also took food over to his dad along with gifts.

I got to use the iPad app, Facetime to watch my younger brother and his family open their gifts and then Mom and Don later. That was neat!

I’m now relaxing, enjoying my tea in my blue glass mug (from Sean and a set of 6) and my new book from Brian called: Local Treasures: Geocaching across America.  : )

Sean in front of our tree-only shot of our Christmas-just so busy!

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Gifts from Sean. Love both!

Disgifts

My new book, Some sweet Pier One bird canvases. a Vera Bradley wallet and two sock monkeys.

Sean got his dad a new laptop! Bri is getting use to it and having a little trouble with it.

Sep23

Happy Birthday Mom!

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We got in a few hours ago after seeing my mom on her big day. She wasn’t up to par and feeling blue, but I had gifts I had found that I knew she would enjoy.

First we stopped off for that one geocache down in a Quaker Cemetery in Concordville. It was right near where the Delaware County Community College use to be in the 1960s to early 70s before they build the new place where I attended and enjoyed.

So Brian had to play monkey man and climb a tree for the cache! He did well, but I didn’t want him to take a tumble.

Can you see it?

It’s green and up high in the middle.

So we got to mom and she enjoyed the gifts we brought. I found a 1939 World Fair book, not in good shape, but she liked it as she was 8.5 when she went!

I got her some marker pens she asked for and a few other little things.

 

My phone camera was a little wonky here.

Looke at the beautiful St. Bernard’s my great grandfather William painted. He painted signs for a living. He was a wonderful artist and I wish we had more of his work, though not sure if he did a lot of works like this.

My brother invited us to a roast pork, eggplant parm and mac and cheese dinner with Strawberry ice cream roll and chocolate mousse cake.

So glad we went down for mom.

Jul11

Magical night of music and lights

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Our concert ‘finally’ came up. Don’t think we weren’t worried about it being a warm night, but it turned out fairly nice with lower humidity. Wow, it was pretty cool to see an actual movie star like Kevin Bacon, and he’s quite a musician. He came out playing the bongos, but switched to guitar and also harmonica. His brother Michael (age 63) not only plays the guitar, but he played the Cello in a few songs-what a treat.

Sean’s Instagram-really good! We were about 9 rows back, but you can see the view I had of the hugging couple. I also had a 40-something Madonna like lady who couldn’t sit still and had gotten up right at this moment.

The show was about 75 minutes (one encore-Bob Dylan’s ‘I Shall Be Released’).

This was a song about being a mummer’s son-called New Year’s Day. It’s a Philly thing, but what happens is the mummer’s who are in the New Year’s Day Parade, go around and recite the part of this song…

After the show was over, we went to the left through the gardens instead of to the right near where the exit was. Well little did I know, we were ‘allowed’ to go see the Bruce Munro light display down by the lake! It was so magical and like a fairyland. I am taking my mom to see the rest of it on Thursday night.

This was one of the teaser displays out front.

We got some ice cream on the way home, so it was a nice evening for the three of us!

Apr13

1912-2012 In Memoriam

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It’s difficult to believe that 100 yrs have past and my late grandmom was only 8 years old when Titanic hit an iceberg and sunk coming from Liverpool, England to New York City on it’s maid voyage. I made the above collage several years ago and probably shared it back then. We got married on the anniversary of the ship hitting the iceberg, the 14th, but it sank a few hours later in the wee hours of the 15th. I was reading about a 22 year old actress Dorothy Gibson who recalls the chilling sounds of people calling out to be saved that haunted her the rest of her life.  We’ve seen a few Titanic exhibits over the years which were interesting and sad.

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I can’t believe it’s Friday already! Monday really threw us for a loop because of my father-in-law’s nosebleed issue. I sure hope he’s not going to start getting blood pressure spikes as the lady in the dentist office (I had to go there on Wednesday to get a filling replaced-again) said that started happening to her mom because of hbp.

I’ve just been running around locally shopping here and there a bit while Bri was figuring out tax stuff which took several hours on the phone with his dad. I will be so glad when it’s all settled.

Tonight is a little party for my niece who turned 13 on the 11th. I bought her many different things from our travels here and there. I just made her a huge tissue paper flower.

Yesterday my middle brother was taken to the hospital by ambulance as he had chest pains at work. He was having them a bit a week ago and now he thinks it’s his gallbladder. They are watching him tonight. The hospital is 5 minutes from his new office building and where I’ve had some procedures. He was a terrible foul mood last week and yelled and cussed at me for nothing. His complaint was I don’t do enough for mom and there I was taking her to the eye doctor and grocery store. My other brother (I have 3) and me had our gallbladders out when we were in our 20s.

Mar19

Sparked a memory

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What I really love about the iPad more than the games, are the info apps with articles from topics of your choosing. The app ‘Zite’ is one I enjoy reading. I have the ‘Film and TV’ section and there were candid photos of old time Hollywood celebrities and their directors. I guess before I was even 10, I thought the movies showed us how people really lived, like in ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business’-singing and dancing their way through life and everything was peachy keen in the end. And if the movie was in black and white, it had to be real, right? (Thinking home movies were mostly b&w). I mentioned There’s ‘No Business…’ as one summer way before VCRs, Blue ray and on-demand, we had to watch tv and watch the movie when it came on. That movie was shown once a day at say 1 pm for at least a week. My brother Don must have watched it almost every day. It was either too hot or rainy and I remember Ethel Merman singing her heart out.

Anyway, seeing all the old photos like this also sparked another memory for me (Here’s the site with more photos):

They say it’s very unusual to see Joan and Bette smiling so broadly, especially in a movie where Bette is playing a kook.

The game we played constantly off and on for many months called ‘Movie Moguls’

This is not our game, it may be long gone. You were to collect the stars from the different movies on the board-it was like Monopoly. I remember playing it at night down in Wildwood, NJ when my mom and grandmom went to play bingo!  My mom always enjoyed movies and celebrities, so I guess it rubbed off on us. We were probably 13 and 14 when we enjoyed this game.

It’s based on 20 movie productions. Players take turns moving around the board and have the option to buy various productions of older movies like Casablanca, High Noon, or A Streetcar Named Desire. There are title cards to represent ownership, with a list of three actors on them. If someone lands on your production they pay “studio fees”. The amount is dependant on the number of stars you’ve collected and any awards you’ve collected.

There are several ways to acquire stars. The cards are nice with b&w photos of actors such as Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, and 58 others. Once you’ve completed the production, you are eligible to receive rewards and there are several ways to get those. There are also Production & Publicity cards much like chance and community chest in Monopoly. Bankruptcies occur if you have to pay more than you have. The short games last about an hour and there are three variations.

Regular game is two to three hours. Reviewed by Rex Reed for a finishing touch.

The above description is from Gameboardgeek.com found at the Monopoly link above.

Jan29

Stuff

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Hey gang! It’s been fun looking at the blogs in the One World, One Heart event in my sticky post. I haven’t gotten to 100 on the list and I believe there are over 700 now! It’s neat to see so many creative bloggers out there. Don’t forget, if you have a blog and like to visit new bloggers and enter contests for awesome things, then drop by OWOH until Feb. 15th.
On a personal note, and it’s hard to talk about, my one family member is really unhappy and we’re not sure why. I do my best to help my mom when I can. Thursday was an ugly, ugly day. I’m not sure what tomorrow will bring, but wish mom luck as it seems to be her clothes and personal things that are always an issue with him. I don’t think I can handle him anymore. I have forgiven him so many times and he was really awful to me yesterday. Bad dream. He’ll probably be moving out sooner or later.
Sean is finally on the register at Wally World! He said it went well until the store’s manager or someone came up to him and asked him if a customer had bought milk and he stalled trying to recall and she said ‘well yes or no’? Seems the customer may have been trying to lift milk maybe in a closed container she later bought, but Sean checked the container and there wasn’t anything in it. I told him it seemed like a ‘test’ to see if he was doing the right thing. Geez.
Taking it one day at a time.