Chicago family Reunion

In family life, love is the oil that eases friction, the cement that binds closer together, and the music that brings harmony. --Eva Burrows

I’m back from Chicago and recharged! Can’t wait to share some memories! Family times are the best. It seems I was always eating a meal with someone and I gained four pounds.

My mother turned 96! We all gathered around her and celebrated with cake decorated in her favorite color, pink!

My sister and brothers occupy a close place in my heart. We enjoyed long talks together. The guys are funny so while they were cracking jokes and we laughed big, the camera snapped!

One night we all got together and read letters Mom wrote in the early 50’s to one of our second cousins, Richard, who was in the Army. Rich was kind enough to give them to us after all these years and we gleaned so much insight from our mother’s everyday life stories about raising us, volunteering in her church and neighborhood and maintaining our home. I will never forget these memories. Get a load of the postage: six cents to mail a letter priority air mail.

In one of her letters, my Mom mentioned how I always wanted to wear my big sister’s clothes!

It reminds me of the joke about the woman who came from a large family of five sisters and four brothers. One day she was looking through the family photo album when she noticed that in picture after picture, all of the children were dressed in matching outfits. Later, she asked her mother why everyone - even the baby - was dressed identically. Her mother replied: "When we had just four children, I dressed you alike so that we wouldn't lose any of you. Then when the other six came along, I started dressing you alike so that we wouldn't pick up any that didn't belong to us!"




I felt blessed to be with my family when we got the text from my nephew, Buddy, that he was coming home. A Marine, Buddy completed his work in Iraq and Afghanistan and the “welcoming home” committee had only one day to arrange festivities. About 35 Viet Nam Veterans on motorcycles met Buddy at the airport along with well wishers waving flags and transporting him and his parents, my younger brother and his wife, to their home via limousine.

I’m so glad to have these memories now that I’m back at home in Arizona with my husband. Like my mother, my simple everyday life is filled with work, my church, treasured friendships and precious children. And blogger friends! It’s good to be home!