Throwback Thursday....Christmas!

First off here is a photo from Christmas Eve of 1960............

This is one of my earliest memories in life. It was taken at my maternal grandparent's house in front of their Christmas tree.  Note all that lovely tinsel! lolz

Growing up my parents let me and my brothers each open up one gift on Christmas Eve night.  I don't recall what I had unwrapped that year but each of my brothers had opened up gift watches.

Then my mom told us to sit in our pjs in front of the tree for a photo.
And she had my brothers hold their gift they had opened.
She told me I couldn't hold what I had opened and I got quite upset.

You will notice that while I am not bawling out my eyes I don't look very happy either.  ;-)  I think I was on the verge of tears when my father snapped that photo.
I was 1 month short of being 2 years old in that picture.

And for the other TBT photo(s) here is a shot of our Christmas tree for 2015........

We only put up the small tabletop tree this year again.
And most of the ornaments are old handmade ones.

This is from a set of Santas I made my brother in the 1980's.  When he passed away in 2009 I was sure to retrieve these to keep to put on my tree in remembrance of him.......

This is another handmade felt Santa my mother made when I was in elementary school.

Another handmade doll ornie made by my mother.  She was a homeroom mom and the school had a big Christmas bazaar/fundraiser and all the moms made ornaments to sell.

This is a ceramic camel ornie I made back in the early 1990's when I had a craft business.  This was an ornie I gave my mother back then and after she passed in 2000 I inherited it back......

Another of the felt ornies made by my mom......

Hubs favorite ornament, a barrel of George Dickel whiskey....lol

Another homemade by my mom.  It's hard to make out from this angle but it's a drum a la the Little Drummer Boy......

Either my mother or I painted this wooden ornament back in the 1960's or early 1970's.  It was from a kit she bought...

This is a tiny, 2 inch long plastic Nativity scene ornament.  It was what I got as a reward for selling crap for my school/class for Christmas in 2nd or 3rd grade.  I sold enough to "buy" a few of these as my reward.

This is a sand dollar I painted, put a ribbon on and made into a Christmas ornament back in the late 1980's.

And this is my version of the lace doll above that my mom had made.  I made these in the late 1980's to sell at craft shows before I started doing ceramics.........

And that's it from me for TBT.

College Boy and I ran to the grocery store again today for a whole mess of stuff, mostly a ham for cheap to stick into the freezer and a whole bunch of foodstuffs for CB to take back to college in January.

I hope everyone has a quiet and peaceful Christmas Eve and if I don't pop back on here to post before tomorrow I wish you a Merry Christmas celebrating the way in which you choice.

Sluggy

Throwback Thursday

Back in May I shared this photo......

It's one of those "old timey" photos tourist places sell.  We were in New Hampshire for this one and my youngest was about 6 months old.

Well here is another "old timey" photo of my 3 kids taken at Bush Gardens in Williamsburg, VA.......they will kill me for posting this one..............

 

Their Aunt and Uncle took them to Bush Gardens one day when we were down visiting in Virginia.
I thought it was the Summer their grandmother died in 2000 but that would have made College Boy only 4.5 years old in this picture.  I think eldest is 15 or 16 in this which would make it a 2006 or 2007.

I love how the photographer posed College Boy with a gun pointing at his sister.  Those two had a contentious relationship growing up(she tormented him incessantly)so I am sure if that gun had been real and loaded he'd have had the urge to "take her out". lolz

In the previous "old timey" photo the Daughter had been very upset she didn't get to hold a gun like her older brother so I am sure she loved that she got a gun this time.  ;-)

If I ever get the three of them in the same place at the same time I need to go haul them to a tourist photo place again.  They don't enjoy this sort of thing now so it would be a struggle.

Have you ever taken these hokey types of fun photos while on vacation?

Sluggy


 

Throwback Thursday.....Sluggy's Sordid Past

Have you ever "googled" old boyfriends and flames?

I did recently and found some upsetting news.

Back when I was a senior in high school I hung out with a diverse mix of folks.
In high school I had a variety of friends.......my "art" friends, my "theater" friends, my friends who I had known since childhood and elementary school and then my friends who I took  the same classes with and hung out with both in school and outside of school.

Then there were the friends I made outside of school doing local community theater.
One of these friends was named Jane and she was an older woman.....well "older" meant anyone over 18 years old at that time to me. lolz

I met her doing a local theater production of "Once Upon a Mattress". (Sort of a fitting title for a show if you knew Jane. *snort*)
As it turned out she worked at the hospital across the street from my high school and lived nearby with her husband.
Jane wasn't happy in her marriage and use to go out to clubs dancing all. the. time. 
And sometimes I went with her.  She was planning on leaving her husband and had rented an apartment and I and a friend from school(who's mother had kicked her out of the house)were going to share the apartment with her for the Summer(after I graduated from high school). 

Anyway, I was hanging out with Jane at night sometimes when I wasn't working my part time job or doing theater and let's just say that Jane met some interesting characters. ;-)  One night Jane invited me to hang out with her and her newest boyfriend, Romeo(yes, that was actually his name!)and this new beau brought along his friend, Mike.

Romy and Mike were buddies serving on the same ship in the US Navy.
My hometown had quite a large population of Filipinos, either immigrants from the Philippines or Filipinos who had joined the US Navy and were stationed in Norfolk, VA.
Yes, I dated a squid.....squid is the not so endearing term used by locals to describe members of the US Navy.
Hey! I grew up near one of the largest naval installations in the US so it's only natural that I would date a sailor at some point.

Mike was a nice guy and fairly shy.  He was only my second serious relationship at that point in my life.  He was also 6 years older than me and he was born and raised in the Philippines.  He joined the navy to see the world and to rise above a life of poverty back in the Philippines.  He had a large family with many siblings, all younger than he was.
He taught me how to make "pancit" and a few curse words in Tagalog, his native tongue.

We were "an item" the Spring and Summer of 1977 but the relationship quietly died away when I left to attend college outside of Baltimore that Fall.  Mike wasn't a letter writer and this was before the internet and cell phones and I had no landline at college.

I heard nary a word from Mike after the Summer of 1977, until two years later, during the Summer of 1979, while I was in New Hampshire doing Summer Stock Theater in a little town called Milford.   The phone in Mrs. Guertin's barn, where the theater's costume shop was located, rang one day and out of the blue, it was Mike on the line.  He had called my family home in VA and my mother happened to have been there at that time and gave him the number for the theater where I was living/working in NH.

We spoke for about a half an hour.  Mike was still in the Navy and still stationed in Norfolk VA.  He had leave(aka time off)and wanted to make a trip up to see me and renew our relationship.    Being Summer Stock I didn't get time off if he came up anyway so that wasn't such a good idea.
Besides I was now seeing and had been together with my current Hubs about 1.5 years at that time.  He said he'd call me again when I returned to Virginia before going back to college, we said goodbye and I never heard from him again.

  Mike and Romeo aboard ship..  Mike is the one mugging for the camera.

I went googling Mike the other day just out of curiosity and found out that he was dead.

Evidently he stayed in the Navy and achieved the rank of Chief Petty Officer.  Unfortunately he died in 1993 at the age of 39.  Place of death was listed as the North Pacific which means he died aboard ship. 
He was so young to have died.  It's sort of shocking to find out someone you knew when you were young died so long ago.
I don't know what he did between when we ended communications and his death.  I hope he had a good life after we parted ways and found love in his journey.
I still have a soft spot in my heart for him and this news saddened me greatly.

R.I.P.
Michael Carlos Nepomuceno

Sluggy



 

Throwback Thursday

Here's my photo for this rendition of Throwback Thursday.
It was taken in Lincoln, New Hampshire in August of 1996.
I was 37 years old.

Obviously it's one of those "old timey" photo place's photos.
I'm the "Big Chief Frizzy Hair" standing in back.
Hubs is the cowpoke holding our papoose, College Boy, and my oldest son is a cowboy and my daughter is a drumming Native American.

I remember that my oldest son had just turned 5 years old that Summer and absolutely thrilled he got to hold a gun!
My daughter also wanted to hold a gun so she wasn't so happy but she put on a big smile anyway(that is so NOT like her, to feign happy when she is not, even at 3 years old. 8-)
College Boy was almost 6 months old when this photo was done.

That was quite the eventful Summer vacation.  I had developed very bad post partum depression after College Boy was born and I was not provided the "help" I needed to get past it so it was a long slog back to life.  My mother came to help just before College Boy was born and stayed about a month.  I didn't bounce back from this birth and when she left I fell apart.  I guess having had a C-section(my first one)with this pregnancy and not recovering very well or fast, then having 3 children to care for all at or under the age of 5(and none of them in school fulltime(Oldest went to Pre-K for 3 hours 3 x a week), it just was too much for me to handle.  Hubs worked very long hours and had a 1.5 hour commute to New Jersey.  The hospital was 1 hour away so it's not like I could get there to see a doctor by myself.

Anyway, I've got a glazed look in my eyes in the photo still 6 months out from giving birth.  I don't think I was sleeping much still.  I slap-dashed put together this vacation which included a few nights in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and a couple of nights in Brunswick, ,Maine(the town I had done 2 seasons of Summer stock theater in back in 1980 and 1981).

The day this photo was taken we were sightseeing at Clark's Trading Post.  When I was about 4 years old my family had gone to Clark's while on a family vacation.  I remembered their live bear show fondly.  I thought my kids would enjoy it to, especially since my daughter was very much into animals. 
We saw the bear show, rode a few rides, rode the old fashioned "real" train(oldest was into trains), viewed their collection of vintage Americana and the awesome MOXIE collection......and then we made the mistake of eating lunch there.
And the chicken sandwich I had gave me a raging case of food poisoning.

There is a tradition in our family of me getting sick eating food on vacation.  And this trip was no exception. ;-)
1993?  The year mom got food poisoning at Wendy's going down to see Grandma in VA.
1996?  The year mom got food poisoning at Clark's in NH.
1991?  The year mom got food poisoning at The Boat House in Beach Haven, NJ.
You get the idea......

I spent the end of the day sick as a dog, throwing up back at the hotel room.  Hubs took the older two kids to a Burger King with a playland for 3 hours(bless him!)while College Boy napped and I rolled around in bed sweating profusely and tried to sleep.
How fun....ha!

The next day we had plans to go to nearby Loon Mountain.  Being Summer the plans were to ride the ski lift(enclosed gondolas)to the summit and walk around, have lunch at their café on the mountain.  They had mountain bike rentals at that time but the kids were too little to do any of that.  Afterwards we were going to walk around one of the little touristy towns and let the kids buy a souvenir.

Well by the next morning after the Clark's incident I really wasn't feeling the love of going up a mountain on ski lift or coming back down.  But Hubs forced me to go since he couldn't handle the 3 kids alone. College Boy wasn't walking yet and had to be carried in a Snugli but at almost 30 lbs. and me still feeling dizzy and queasy I wasn't up to carrying him around all day so we had to take the double stroller into a gondola and up the mountain.  I still don't know how Hubs got that thing in the gondola with him! lolz  I rode up and down that mountain with the 3 kids and I got more queasy on each ride up and down. 
On the summit they had a Lumberjack Show that day but it took place in an amphitheater they had built into the side of the mountain so it was a steep incline down to the show and back up again.  By the time the show happened I was able to drag the stroller behind me and go about 10 rows down to the show while Hubs took the older two kids right up front to good seats.  I just remember closing my eyes and praying that this day would end and I could collapse into my bed back at the hotel.

Obviously I survived the day and that trip though I can't find any other pictures of me on that vacation in the photo album and maybe that's a good thing! ;-)

Sluggy


 

Throwback Thursday

I've been trying to scan and edit some of the photos in my mom's stacks of photo albums this week.
It's slow going since I have to scan them into hubs computer(the printer with the scanner is attached to his machine upstairs), then he has to email me the photos, then after uploading them to OneDrive I have to download them to my machine and then edit them. ugh.  Why won't they download from the email attachments directly to my machine(instead of having to upload them first to OD)I have no clue!
And then Hubs emailed me some scanned photos as pdfs....wtf!?!?
Sigh.
I will Never get this all finished before I die.....ugh!

Anyway, here is a photo I love.  I am not in it since I wasn't born yet when it was taken.
It's of my maternal grandparents(my mom's parents)and my maternal grandmother's mother.

I believe this was taken in the mid 1950's, given the clothing and the car parked next to them.
The building behind them has a store sign which I think says "Leggett's"(You can see the first 5 letters.).
Leggett's was a smaller department store chain that began in 1927 in Lynchburg, VA.
Not sure if this store was the Lynchburg store but by this time in the 1950's they had more stores dotting the map in south central Virginia......Farmville, Roanoke, South Boston all had a Leggett's.
Suffice it to say, they were standing in a mid-sized city somewhere in Southeastern Virginia.

Anyway, this photo is of my great grandmother Lucy Baker Vassar, her daughter Lillian Vassar Harper and Lillian's husband, Wirt Harper.

Yes, my grandfather was named WIRT.
Don't laugh.....it's an old traditional Southern name.
People are naming their kids far worse names today IMHO.

Anyway, once my mother left home and married at the ripe old age of 16, her parents were empty-nesters, free to do as they pleased since she was an only child.
My mom left home in June of 1951 right after she finished 11th grade.

My grandmother worked full time and my grandfather did not at this point in his life.
They did go on vacation every year and I've been told that often, after my mother was living away from their home, that they'd take Lillian's mother with them, as she was a widow.

Can you imagine as an adult married couple, taking your mother along on all your summer vacations?

So I have quite a few photos of the three of them together in various vacation type spots and some not-so vacation type spots.
I love my grandfather in this one.
Let's just say that my grandfather was something of a "character".
He would "mug" for the camera and I am sure he put the bill of his cap up like that just for this photo.

Yep, Wirt was a fun guy......
And I love his two tone "stepping out" shoes. lolz

Sluggy
 

Throwback Thursday on Friday...The Old Ball & Chain

Aug. 28, 1982.

32 years ago I said "I Do" to my soul mate.

Love them early 80's fashion and that outdated wedding apparel
And the hair......!!!

I truly have lived the frugal lifestyle.  That wedding was done on a shoestring.  No paid photographer, reception in the church basement, no honeymoon.  I may be wrong but this wedding et al(including rehearsal dinner & reception) cost around $700, much of which we didn't pay for....well we DID "pay" the minister and the state for the license and blood tests, as I rightly recall.
Yes, we were poor students.

I made all the gowns in the wedding party, and the hats too!
My mother was freaked out because I was up until 3am the night before the ceremony still sewing.

Hey!, I was the original Project Runway, wasn't I?
This wedding shindig would have been classier if Tim Gunn had been there though.

Look at the silly idiot in off-white with the 'fro hair.  She thought she knew it all.
And her life didn't turn out anything like she thought it would.

Life is like that, isn't it?  23 year olds plan and g*d laughs. ;-)
But I wouldn't go back and change most of it, and certainly not this part!
Well I would have did my hair differently.....

It's been a hell of a ride so far.
Here's hoping the next 32 years outdo the first......

Sluggy