Category Archives: family

Photo Hunt-Childhood

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Dianne and Don

I love this photo as it’s really too small a pool for two toddlers but Florida in the summer is hot, hot, hot! My brother and I are only a year apart and were close for many years. Maybe putting this up will send him vibes to get in touch with us all up here.

Later on today (it’s a little past midnight here), Bri and I are going to get a chaise lounge chair a lady from the Yahoo freecycle group is nice enough to give me! It’s sight unseen, but it’s free. I don’t have a lounger right now. I just put a request for a used, but good one and I got a few replies. If I had been quicker, I could have gotten a ton of free perennials-rats! And Bri perked up an ear when he heard someone got a snowblower for free. Check to see if there’s a group for your area.

I got my blog critiqued here. Thanks Bill, much appreciated.

Time flies

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In 4 months Sean will be headed up to University Park. It doesn’t seem possible! The two of us were sitting next to people we know from church (by chance) at a restaurant on Friday called ‘Cheeburger, cheeburger’. They have two sons, one of whom graduated with Sean and their other son was about to graduate from high school. We were talking about empty nests. The younger son then ate the 16 oz burger and made us laugh a bit and forget that childhood truly does fly by.

I didn’t do much yesterday and today I am home from church with the sniffles. I am pretty much finished the following ATCs one of which is my grandmom Ruth (see her marriage license below) and me at about the age of 1. That is my Uncle Don’s house without all the trees way back in 1960-61. I didn’t care to go there as my aunt would stick me in a playpen for hours on end (so I’ve been told). I don’t look too happy here, do I? This was at a time when my mom was expecting my brother Don, and me being the baby already here, well I guess she needed a babysitter once in a while.

Time Flies
The clock face came off of a CD of images I purchased at eBay. The ‘fly’ in green came from an online image generator where you type in the word and you get an image like this back. The bird is from an old book and is a Cape May warbler. I added zinnias (also from an old book) to the one of my grandmom and me as they were her favorite flower and I still grow them. They are easy to grow and I recommend them!

Speaking of Uncle Don, he had good blood work and will probably be headed back home after 3 months in the nursing home.

Photo Hunt-Rare

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My grandparent’s marriage certificate from 1921, though my grandfather spelled his name with one ‘l’:

Marriage license

My  above mentioned grandparents were married until his passing in January, 1960. I was only about 8 weeks old, so I never knew him. My ‘mom-mom’ was in my life until 2000, when she passed on at almost the age of 97.

Happy birthday sweet niece

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My sweetie girl Tori is 8 yrs old today. She is a gem to me. We share a comment bond-only girls in a brood of boys. We also share a similar middle name-I’m Carol and she’s Caroline. I hope she has a fun day. Auntie Di (also your godmother) loves ya lots!

Tori ATC

Dianne at 6

Here I am at 6. You won’t be seeing the 8 yr old Dianne with the bad perm. Can you tell Tor and I are related?

Ancestors and things

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I went down and met my mom at the hospital thrift shop. I was there browsing when she called and said she was finally finished up with her doctor’s appointment. She needs to get quite a few tests, one of which is a mammogram. I don’t know why she needs to be put through some of the others like a nuclear stress test and an MRI-I can almost guarantee she won’t be able to hack the treadmill at almost 77. She had a MRI several years ago and was in the machine for 1.5 hours without moving. They’d have to drug me for that one. She said there is an ‘open model’ in a place about 20 minutes from her house. She worries the heck out of me-so thin, hardly eats (I took her for an early dinner and she only ate the hamburger and not the bun at Ruby Tuesday), her house has so much in it, things that could be discarded. My brother and his pals did a ton more in her yard then I thought. I’ll have to take photos next time. She has old pine trees (that my grandfather Alan planted in the 50s) and they took out 6 dead ones and trimmed many from the bottom up-no privacy now. Ken happen to stop over and I suggested bushes along the neighbor’s fences. He was not thrilled by this. I came home and found a tick crawling up my pant leg. Mom’s yard was disturbed, so I’m thinking it came from there. Talk about taking one’s clothes off quickly! When you’ve been deathly ill from a tick, you don’t play with fire!

What I got at the thrift shop-a real old flour sifter (ok I’ll take photos!) and an old musical sewing box.

Below is a photo (taken with my camera!) of my great grandfather William Hasselberg and his siblings that mom gave me a copy of today. The third man over is the great grandfather (Charlie) of my cousins with the store Dane Decor I mentioned a few posts back. My mom thinks this is from the 1930s-40s and was taken in Bohemia, Maryland. When I see Bette Midler, I think of her husband, Martin Van Hasselberg. Also, Elizabeth Hasselbeck’s husband must be a distant relative.

Great grandfather William

My great grandfather is the first one!

Going on to other things and a weird coincidence-aren’t you glad you know who Dannielynn belongs to? I mean she looks just like her real father. I was looking up Larry Birkhead to see how old he was (34) and then clicked on the link to Anna Nicole Smith who was born November 28th, the same as my brother Don. Here’s the weird thing-her father’s name is Donald Eugene Hogan and my brother’s name is Donald Gene!

Easter Monday

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This was a quiet day. Yesterday was too, but I was out in the kitchen for a while. Not that I mind, as I love that kitchen now. It will be almost a year since the remodel-hard to believe! We had Bri’s dad here, he talked our ears off and still tells Sean how tall he’s getting. I had ham and turkey-both freebies because of bonus coupons. We had the pasta salad, red potato salad, green beans, corn, rolls, coleslaw, a cool whip type prepackaged dessert and chocolate cake also from the store.

So here’s what I made with some of the leftover turkey:
Sweet and sour turkey

You take a can of pineapple tidbits or chunks and make a sauce out of the juice. I added a little relish and maraschino cherries to make it a true sweet and sour. The other red you see are grape tomatoes and red peppers. I think I’d like it with shrimp and chicken better. You know how reheated turkey has ‘that taste’. Maybe I need to wrap it better for storage. We had brown rice and couscous too.
Hopefully off to mom’s tomorrow!

Happy Easter

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Vintage Easter
After cooking from the early afternoon to just a little while ago (taking a breather) I wanted to stop by and wish everyone a blessed Easter. We are waiting for Brian’s dad to get here. I took a photo of my asparagus pasta salad that I will share later. Hope you are having a nice day.

Asparagus pasta salad
It needed a little something extra-perhaps the pasta absorbed too much of the oil? You see: asparagus, grape tomatoes, ham, pepperoni, carrots, mozzarella and pasta! Yoy can find the recipe here.

The decorating Danes are back!

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Congrats to my cousins for the rebuilding on their flagship store, Dane Decor in less than a year. Lightning hit this 19th century building that originally was a church last June and gutted it-I believe I mentioned it happening in this blog. A fireman happen to see the lightning and knew it had struck something and got to Dane Decor before the siren went off. The 4 guys’ grandmom Kate and my grandmom Ruth were Hasselberg first cousins. (for those of you good at geneology-what does that make my relationship to these guys-3rd, twice removed?)Their mom Gloria (passed away in 2000) taught my mom when she was a student teacher and she also came to my wedding. I still use the teak tea cart we received as a gift almost 23 years ago, from Dane Decor! The last time I was at Gloria’s house, Sean was a little baby and I had a severe gallbladder attack the next day. Weird.

Here’s the story about the reopening-(the link may or may not work, but wasn’t at the time I wrote this).

And I’ll have to go visit sometime to say hello as my one cousin Drew would like to chat with me (he said so on my blog last year). Also at the link from last year, another cousin I don’t know left me a message-his name is Sean!

I love that the guys are ‘tree huggers’ and saved an old maple that was part of the store when they enclosed a courtyard for space.

Family time

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Sean drove me down to my brother Ken’s to get my van which he had inspected. It still had a bunch of sleet/snow on it, so Ken and his pal knocked it off-Sean did a little. He’s not much on pitching in. I swear I didn’t teach him that if you get my drift. We gave my nephew Kenny his presents for his upcoming 11th birthday on the 23rd. He liked the rock and roll t-shirt we found for him at the Gap store (he only wears short sleeved shirts) and a little cash. I also made him an Art Trading card and he liked that too. I forgot to photograph it. I have one for Tori all made up for her 8th birthday on April 11th. Then Sean played Playstation2 with Kenny and I talked with Tori while she watched The Disney Channel-her eyeballs were glued to it. : ) Tori and Colleen went to a rollerskating event and Sean and I stayed to visit with the two Kens a little longer. Ken got out the video of when he was cleaning an engine that he had taken out of my Ford Montego back in 1983. He was only about 15-16 yrs old. Then there were footage of him in his prized 1964 Ford Falcon (I know a lot about Fords) and he was peeling out making the tires spin and the exhaust filled the air. The guys got a good laugh.

Ken said he was worried about my mom too and the quality of her home life, said she was pale with black circles around her eyes when he saw her on Friday. He and his pal walked around her yard (after they plowed her driveway) and also saw some damage on her house and her shed roof caved in from all the sleet/snow’s weight. He said he’d fix up the outside but not the inside. I knew I’d have to persuade her to get rid of things. Ken said mom is so stubborn. Makes you sit back and look at your own acquired stuff-speaking of which…

…our basement is a bit discombobulated as Brian spent the day making a path for the furnace guys. Some of my neatly stacked Christmas things got moved here and there. I was going to postpone them coming as I thought we had more to move. I see a few more things that may be in the way. We acquired a lot of junk
stuff in the last 20 years. Oy.