2 Deaths And a Bad Fall In The Family

I haven't been at this site much lately because I've been kind of depressed about a few awful things that have happened over the past few month. My Aunt Dorothy died at the beginning of February and a few weeks ago my Uncle Mike also passed away. They are both my Dad's siblings. And last week my Mom fell three times and on the third one wound up breaking her collarbone. She is in a special rehabilitation unit of the hospital now. I just found out today that this is not covered under charity care, only Medicare so we are responsible for 20% of the bill. My mom has so many medical bills as is. I feel so guilty for being mad at her because the reason that she fell was because she overdid it on her as needed meds which she has been doing for many years. It is hard focusing on much of anything even reading blogs and doing posts because of all of this stress. I will try to get back into doing both sometime soon. I miss my friends here.

The top photo is of mom and I at the Danbury Depot Restraunt in the Poconos PA in 1994. The one of Uncle Mike is from the Christmas of 1980 and that's my Aunt Dorothy at my 8th grade graduation party in 1983. I feel so terrible because I didn't really associate with Dad's side of the family much after my parent's divorce in the early 1990s. I only saw them a little in the mid 90's and a few times after that. Uncle Mike was in the VA hospital for many years. He would send me a Christmas card with money in it every year. I wish that I had been closer to them. I have some good memories of them from my childhood like getting to go to movies for free because my aunt worked at the theater and Uncle Mike teaching us lessons like look both ways before you cross the street and don't sit too close to the TV because it will ruin your eyes.

Easter 1975

The first photo is of my brother, Uncle Mike, Suzy and I from around Eastertime. We would only get to see our friends Suzy and Jenny from Pennsylvania 3 or 4 times a year when they visited their grandparents who were our neighbors. Easter egg dyeing with that Paas kit was so much fun. My favorite color egg to make was always purple. I'm wearing one of my favourite childhood dresses. It's so cool that we were both wearing hats that year. I haven't worn a dressy hat since that decade, I think. Well, maybe once or twice in the 80's. We are with Grandma in her apartment which is right next door to ours and with Dad on our front steps. These are the only 4 photos we have from that year, I wish that they had taken one of us with mom too.

Easter Memories

I loved Easter time as a kid. Decorating the house, dyeing and searching for the eggs, the candy, the meal and being with friends and family was always so special and fun. We would have ham, keilbasa, farmers cheese, babka, potato salad and coleslaw and of course eggs for an early dinner. These photos are from 1981. My Ginger pup managed to get in the background in 2 of them. We usually spent most of the day next door at our grandma's house. That's where we are in 3 of the pictures. The one with Mom, Mark and I is in front of our place. Grandma got us the bunnies that we are holding in the photo with our friends Suzy and Jenny. I remember how excited we were to finally have candy after giving it up for Lent sometimes during our school days. We loved the Gertrude Hawk brand candy that we would order through our school fund raising back then. A white chocolate cross and peanut butter filled and regular chocolate Smidgens were always a part of it.

Happy Easter

I made this picture in 1985 based on a set of placemats that a friend of the family gave us in the late 1970s. Originally I did one in 1979 or 1980 but I foolishly used it as part of a project for Spanish. The teacher liked it alot and kept it hanging in the classroom for several weeks. I should have asked for it back. Mom liked my redo enough to put it in a frame. I should have retaken this photo though- I didn't notice how badly it turned out in the one spot. I haven't been able to spend much time on the computer lately but hopefully will get to do more reading and commenting on blog posts soon. My uncle just died last week and my mom is in the hospital because she fell and broke her collarbone yesterday. I hope that everyone has a very Happy Easter.

My Handmade Easter Decorations

I made these and other Easter decorations sometime in the early 1980s. I used to have so much fun making decorations and also decorating for holidays, especially Easter and Christmas. I haven't decorated for Easter in a very long time though - the late 80's. I was looking through all of our decorations last month and thought about putting them up this year but haven't really felt like doing so. I do have some of my bunnies and lambs beanie babies on the shelf in my room though and was going to put some of mom's Easter type stuffed animals on the shelf in the living room but haven't yet and probably won't which I feel a little bad about. I just can't seem to get into the holidays like I did when I was younger.

My View Master

I can't believe that I forgot that I had The Rescuers for my View Master. Sleeping Beauty was one of my favourite Disney films when I was a kid. I thought that I had the Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear one but it was in with my brother's toys. I had not looked in these totes for many years. I didn't see his actual View Master in his tote, I don't know why he would've kept the slides and not that, unless he has another toy tote somewhere. We also have Scenic Wonders of America and Mark has Star Trek which I forgot to include in this post. The Civil War ones must've been our Dad's because that was his area of interest.

Our Mookie

I keep writing about our Buffy pup and feel bad that I have only mentioned our Mookie a little bit and that was a while ago. This picture is from 1993. She looks so adorable. We got her in October 1992 from friends of the family who already had 4 doggies and someone had given them Mookie because they didn't want her anymore. At first I didn't really like her because I didn't want another doggie, not after what had happened to my Ginger 6 years earlier but eventually I grew to love her too. She is a terrier, Llhasa Apso mix. She was about 2 years old here and we had her until 2005 when she got so sick that we had to have her put to sleep. She was a very playful doggie and loved her stuffed llama and football.