Here You Go, Grandmama

My mom requested some pictures of her grandchildren...

Christmas Pictures. Enjoy!

Thanks to all our friends and family for the thoughtful gifts we received and for making it such a great holiday season with lots of happy memories. I'm very grateful to have such a delightful family to be with at this special time of year. I just wish more of us lived closer together so we could share all the fun with everyone.
As a reward for making it this far, please click here to watch a short, funny video from Christmas Day at my dad's house; just a sample of the goings-on.

Raquel's Halloween Costume

I'll write a full blog on all the haps over the past few days at a later time. For now, here is Raquel as a scary clown for Halloween. She was a hit!

Easter

What lovely weather we had on Easter Sunday. The day was spent at my in-law's house. We ate machaca and fruit tarts, took about a billion pictures of the kiddos and let Raquel hunt for eggies. My nephew Ricky is such a cute little boy and so strong! He cried a little at first but by the end of the day he let me hold him for a long time.

Nothing Special NYE

(a doll Raquel got for Christmas from Grandma Debbie)

Jose and I didn't want to have to hunt for a babysitter for tonight so he picked up a shift and I'm home with the girls who are in bed now. Luckily, SciFi is showing a Twilight Zone Marathon and my little brother brought me a Diet Coke before he went out to party. Easy to please, yes, but I'd be ecstatic if I were wearing a cute old dress with a tiny waist, out on the town with my husband.

Just for fun I took pictures of some old things I own and wanted to show you.

Here is an old album I got at a thrift store. Pasadena has a Salvation Army thrift store that has a very large selection of records. I haven't added to my vinyl collection in several months but I'm thinking I should go the next time they have their end-of-the-month blow out sale.

This is an old piece of linen from the 1920s I bought at an antique store in Topanga Canyon. Raquel and I went with my buddy Jeff. I remember the road was extremely windy (pronounced "wine-d") and I thought, "this place better be worth all this nausea I'm feeling." Well it was. The stuff they had was so neato, I thought I was in a museum. This fabric is probably a table cloth. I haven't figured out how to display it yet.
Here is something I didn't buy. When my maternal grandmother passed away in February of 1998, she had a mobile home (a very nice one) full of her belongings. We had her funeral reception in her home and our parents said each grandchild could choose one item from Grandmama's house to keep as sort of memorabilia. Well, I chose this Fisher Price toy camera. It had been in her house since I could remember and I'd played with it a billion times. Come to find out it had belonged to my Uncle Michael who has autism and retardation. He's lived in a hospital for the mentally ill his entire adult life.This book is part of my Little Golden Book collection. It's my oldest one and it is in almost mint condition except I cracked it open to look at the pictures. I was the first one to read it since it was born in 19-fifty-something.It's about to be 2009 so I better publish this now so I can celebrate with the people on tv!

Memories Aren't Just Dreams

Have you ever seen old films of yourself as a toddler or even as a newborn? Well, for Christmas I received a dvd created by my dad that was made up of 30-year-old footage from his old Super 8 camera. I guess the technology to transfer film to dvd has become more common since my days in film class in college. The good thing is that the films have not lost their beautiful, gritty graininess, a trait of old home movies that video could only hope to replicate.

The first part of the movie is of Christmas time 1977, when my mom was very young and very pregnant with me. My late Grandma Betty (known as Grandmama to her grandkids) was decorating a Christmas tree with my mom and dad. My dad was making goofy faces, something he has always done. They didn't have a tripod so the camera got passed between Mom and Dad so everyone got a chance to be on film. There is also footage of my parents shoveling snow into their little blue pick-up on the side of a road, some place where it had snowed a lot. And then it goes to my dad's parents' house, where the Christmas tree, complete with running train and wind-up monkey crashing cymbals, was decorated to the hilt and the room overflowed with presents wrapped in oldtime-y paper, lustrous ribbons and festive bells.

Watching my newborn self flail my lanky arms about was surreal. I wondered what I was thinking. Being that I was the first born of my dad's three kids, little me is in the rest of the movie, growing up, getting a little sister and then a little brother. The movie stops when I am about 3 years old.

Thanks, Dad, for the most thoughtful gift I've ever received! I am treasuring it.

Christmas Dinner at Dad's

My dad lives about 45 minutes away from us but it took at least twice that long to get there on Christmas afternoon. Rain was pouring and the 210 freeway wasn't flowing faster than 20 mph. Seems to me traffic was much heavier than usual for Christmas Day.

We were so happy to get to Dad's house. It was FREEZING there and windy, making it rain sideways! Maxine slept for the entire trip and was happy to be the center of attention when we got inside. Both of my dad's brothers were there, making it a rare occasion, especially appreciated by Grandpa Charles who, at certain moments, seemed overcome with pure joy. He gets like that sometimes.

Dad made a beautiful prime rib roast. Everyone brought a little something to share at dinner. The food was so good, better than most in recent memory. Dad opened up a $60 bottle of Cab. Don't remember the name but its the best wine I've ever had.

Uncle Mark ate a giant spoonful of some super hot homemade thai sauce from the next door neighbor's garden of peppers and Uncle Jim suggested he drink whiskey to cool himself down. Yadda yadda yadda, a huge bottle of Jack Daniels appeared at the table and Uncle Jim had himself some. Grandpa, the nondrinker he is, couldn't resist being a part of the fun and decided he'd try some. It was pretty funny. None of us had ever seen him do that before. I got it on video for you to watch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6IDTFZDdqQ&feature=channel

For the rest of the evening we sat around talking, eating pie and cake, drinking coffee, watching classic Christmas movies, playing with Raquel and gratefully absorbing the happy feeling evident in every space between us.

Christmas morning

Raquel is still too young to get crazy-excited about Christmas morning so we actually went in and woke her up after 9am. Then we took our time opening presents and checking our stockings. Jose made a pot of coffee and I took plenty of pictures. After we played for a couple hours we got the girls ready to head out to my dad's house (blog forthcoming).