Family "Friday" - MomMom

Well, I'm falling a little behind this week.  I have a Pottery Barn knock-off that I've been working on, but I went to put it together the other night and I realized that it needed a bit more of something so I'll have to talk about that next week.  So with Mother's Day being today perhaps I should have blogged about my Mom, but, instead I'm going to talk about one of the people who helped shape my Mom into the person that she is today.  That would be her Mom or my MomMom.


This is my favorite picture of my grandmother

MomMom (or Mary as most people called her) was born September 19, 1911 in Coaldale, Pennsylvania to a coalminer and his wife.  She was the 2nd of 5 children and the 2nd daughter.  She would have been 100 this past September and, if things had gone a bit differetly, I have no doubt that she would have made it there.  You see, my grandmother comes from a long line of strong, Irish-Catholic women.  I like to think that some of that was passed to me even though I'm not related by blood (oh yeah, I'm adopted, but that's a story for another time).

My grandmother & her siblings

My great-grandfather passed away in 1918 - more on that in the future.  My grandmother had just turned 7.  Her older sister was 8 and a half, her younger sister was 4 and a half, her brother was 1 and a half, and her youngest sister hadn't even been born yet.  Yes, my great-grandmother had 4 children and another one of the way when her husband - the sole breadwinner in the family - passed away.  Remember how I mentioned that line of strong women?  While her father was sick, it was my grandmother's responsibility to run to the pharmacy to get him medicine because her older sister had had scarlet fever and she wasn't supposed to exert herself too much.

My MomMom graduated from high school and went to school to become a teacher and a stenographer.  She studied at the Pierre School of Business, Columbia University, and Elizabethtown College.  She eventually moved to Washington, DC.  She worked for the Patent Office and the Bureau of Prisons.  In 1944, her older sister Anna's husband Joe passed away and in 1947 her older sister passed away as well.  Anna & Joe had 2 children - Mary and Joe - and it was decided that they would have a much better life if they moved to DC to live with their Aunt Mary (my MomMom) than if they stayed in Coaldale.  So my grandmother became the guardian for her sister's children.

At some point in the late 40s my grandmother met my grandfather.  My grandfather had been married previously, but didn't marry in the Catholic Church.  My grandmother was a very strict Catholic and wrote to the bishop to make sure they could get married in the Catholic Church.  If he hadn't said yes, they wouldn't have gotten married and I wouldn't be here.  Luckily, they got married in 1950.  My Mom came along in 1952 and her sister a couple years later. 

My grandfather passed away in 1974.  My grandparents got such a short amount of time together, but they look so happy and in love in every picture I've seen of them.  My grandmother suffered a lot of loss in her life, but she was always so warm.  She had a stronger sense of family than anyone I've ever met.  She baked gingerbread men at Christmas every year.  Now, I'm the one that does that.  Her house was always clean and orderly.  She taught in Catholic school for many years.  These are just bits and pieces of her life.  They make up a woman that I am so proud to call my grandmother and that I miss so much I can't describe it.  There is so much more that I want to know about her and her life.  If only I could go back in time and ask her more about her life and the members of her family that I never had the privledge to meet.  There's so much more I could tell you all, but I hope this has been enough to give you an idea of who my MomMom was.  So, Happy Mother's Day to all the Moms out there.  And the grandmothers, sisters, aunts, and friends who are mother figures.  Thank you for all that you do!

Weekend Finds

I spent Saturday morning yard saling with my Mom.  She's a very saavy yard sale shopper and I often ask her opinion on prices.  This past Saturday was this huge, local community yard sale that happens twice a year.  Everyone in the area seems to have caught on though because I have never been to so many yard sales in one day.  My Mom picked me up at 7 am and we headed directly to the community sale.  I didn't have as much luck as my Mom (she scored a brand new Craftsman buffer for my brother for $8 along with numerous other items), but I did get a J Crew shirt for $1 and well as this Norman Rockwell Baseball poster for our basement:

I like the frame, but I have another plan for it.  I think I'm just going to take the poster out of the frame and attach it to the wall with some command strips.  I also scored a brand new Restoration Hardware photo snowglobe for $3 - originally $29.  From there we hopped in the car and started hitting the neighborhoods in the surrounding area.

At one sale, I got a good sized mason jar, a glass that matches the set my parents' have at their house, and this pretty blue pitcher for $1 TOTAL:

I haven't figured out what I'm going to do with it YET, but I loved the color and just couldn't pass it up.  At another sale, my Mom and I worked a bargain and got a console table for her friend's sister and this plant stand for $10 total:

I also got a Craftsman staple gun with a couple boxes of saples for $5 (a bit overpriced, but oh well) a popcorn bowl for Joe for 50 cents, and then I scored another combo deal and got a full length mirror for the guest room and a Nationals pennant for Joe for $1.  The frame around the mirror is a little thinner than I would have liked, but I couldn't pass it up for that price.  I'm planning to paint the frame as well as a lamp for the guest room a really pretty deep blue color.

Later than day, Joe and I ran to Lowe's and finally bought a weed wacker/edger and a leaf blower/vacuum.  Yup, we're getting real with the yard work.  That's a good thing because our backyard needs a ton of work.  Or we need to win the lottery so we can hire someone to fix it up.  Sunday, we ran more errands and I worked a Home Goods run in somehow.  Go me!  I got the cutest little wrought iron bird.  Here he is on top of the box for the RH snow globe:

And here he is in his home in our foyer:

Fittingly, he's sitting on top of a vintage book on bird watching that I got from a barn sale a few months ago.  Speaking on the barn sale, I just saw on Facebook that they're having another sale this weekend!  I hope I can work my way up there.  They're not exactly close by, but I just love digging through all the treasure they've collected.  Anyways, all in all, it was a pretty nice weekend.  Now, if I could just find a way to have longer weekends, but still make the same amount of money.  :0)

Family Friday (a bit late)

Well, it was an INSANE week at work so I'm a bit late in my post, but here it is.  As I mentioned in my last post, I've gotten really into genealogy in the last year or two.  It all started here:

Yup, those are two 30-gallon platic tubs (currently sitting in Joe's office).  These two tubs were filled with photos and papers from my grandmother's house.  My MomMom passed away February 20, 1995.  For months after that, I spent a lot of time with my Mom going over to my grandmother's house to help clean it out and get it ready for sale.  My Mom ended up taking all of the photos and such from the house and they ended up in the basement at my parents' house.  And that's where they sat for 15+ years.  I offered one time to take them and go through them all and scan them all in as my Christmas present to her, but she didn't seem interested at the time.  Somehow, I talked her into it and they came to my house in February 2011.

I have found some really cool photos in those tubs.  I was hoping that I would be further along with the scanning and organizing of these photos than I currently am, but this had to be put on hold for after our basment flooded (twice) last fall.  I'm really looking forward to using my Friday blog posts to share some of these photos and tell the stories of my ancestors.  I'm also hoping that this will continue to keep me on pace with getting everything together with these photos.  I'd like to be able to give my Mom, her sister, and their cousins Mary and Joe (whom my grandmother partially raised - more on that next week) each a box of photos and a DVD with the scans of all of them this Christmas.  I'm also planning on giving copies of the DVDs and some of the photos to my cousins and my brother.  I think family is really important and so is knowing where you came from and how far your family has come.  I hope anyone out there reading this will enjoy reading about my family's journey and be encouraged to look into their family's history.

Revamping

Considering the epic fail that has been this blog so far, you'd think I would just give up.  However, I've really gotten into reading blogs in the last few months and it's given me a renewed sense of wanting to blog.  One of my new favorite bloggers - Kristen over at A Simply Klassic Home - recently did a feature series called the Beginner Bloggers Club and I'm looking forward to using the hints and tips I picked up from there to really kick start things.

First things first, I'm going to try to post at least twice (but hopefully 3 times) a week.  I'm planning to do this by having some regular features.  I've really become a genealogy nerd in the last year or so.  I'm planning to share some of my adventures and feature some of my family members on Fridays.  I'm thinking of calling it Family Friday, but I'm not totally sold on the name yet.  Another idea would be Project Mondays to show off whatever project(s) I've been working on lately.  Finally, I was thinking of just keeping Wednesdays random and posting about whatever floats my boat that day.  I'm concerned about doing that because I haven't done so well with the posting whatever I want thing in the past.  I'll just have to see how that goes. I guess techcnially today would be the first random Wednesday post though so go me!

You may also have noticed that I'm playing around with the background and such.  Bear with me on that, please, it's definitely a work in progress.

Resolutions Recap

Ok, so things haven't been going so well with keeping up the resoultions. Part of the problem is that I sit in front of a computer all day so I don't really want to sit in front of one again when I get home. Lousy excuse, I know. So if you'll recall, these are our (my) resolutions for 2011:

1. Blog at least once a week.
2. Get healthy.
3. Practice yoga at home.
4. Come up with and use a chore chart.
5. Finish the "Year of the House" list.

Results:

1. So, as previously mentioned, resolution 1 is not going so well. I think I'm going to have to start finding a few minutes to blog at work if I want to keep up with this one.

2. This is going well. I've definitely been eating healthier since the year started. Less pizza and Chinese, more cooking at home. I've also started working out a couple of times a week. I'm in the process of getting signed up with a personal trainer and I'm really looking forward to that because I definitely need to get in some strength training. I'm also signing up for the Komen 5K in June.

3. I took that "growing your home practice" workshop and so far, I've only done yoga at home once since then. I'm hoping to do it tomorrow morning so as to get in some home practice for this week. I need to increase this. Even if I do 10 minutes a day at home, it would be better than nothing.

4. I have neithe come up with nor used a chore chart. This needs to happen though. We've been really busy and this would be a good way to keep ourselves on track with keeping the house clean.

5. We're doing decently on the House list. We have painted the office! The only problem is that the previous owners either didn't know about or chose not to use painters tape when they painted so we have to touch up around the ceiling and baseboards. The next project is going to be to organize the basement storage area. There will be new storage shelving involved. There will be some throwing away and donating involved. There will also be some gathering of items for a yard sale involved.

All in all, not a total fail, but we're not doing great either.

Chicago

I spent my childhood heading to the northern suburbs of Chicago at least once a year to visit my grandmother and cousins, but in the many, many years of doing this I think we only actually went to do anything in the city of Chicago twice. One time, I was little and we went to some sort of children's museum or something. The other time, I was probably in college and my brother and I went down into the city with one of our cousins so we could see the Shedd Aquarium. So prior to our trip to Chicago to celebrate our 1 year wedding anniversary, I couldn't really say that I had ever really seen the city of Chicago. I don't even remember how we decided on the Windy City, but I'm really glad that we did.


We flew up on a Saturday morning and headed immediately to our hotel to at least drop off our bags. Luckily, our room was ready when we arrived so we were able to drop off our bags and get cleaned up before heading out and about. Our hotel was in an excellent location. We were right by an L station and were within a 15 minute walk to Navy Pier. Since it was a fairly nice (although colder than we had expected) day we decided to walk along Chicago's Riverwalk to get out to Lake Michigan. The walk was really nice, but the closer we got to the Lake the clearer it became that Chicago truly is the Windy City. We got over to Navy Pier and picked up the tickets for the Architecture boat tour we were going to take that afternoon. Then we headed in to Navy Pier for lunch and had our first Chicago food - a Chicago Dog.

I don't usually eat hot dogs and I don't know who thought that all of these toppings would possibly work together, but they do and this delicious concoction was worth every bite. I would absolutely eat another Chicago Dog. After lunch, we spent a lot of time browsing the shops and pretty much just trying to stay inside. It was really cold along the water that day and we were not really prepared for that. We had fleece jackets, but they were not thick enough for that biting wind. We had the smart idea to get coffees before boarding our boat tour, but that warmth only lasted so long. I was shaking with cold by the time our boat docked again. The boat tour was really cool. It was a great way to see the city and hear about some of its history. I highly recommend it to anyone who visits Chicago. Just make sure you have weather appropriate clothing. That evening we drank wine at the hotel's complimentary wine hour and then went to dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. We were both fairly disappointed with Chicago's HRC. The food was decent, but the shop was terrible and the rest of the place was a bit lacking.

The next morning we spent a little time exploring the area around our hotel before heading to the L station so we could board the train and head to Wrigley Field. Our hotel really was in a great area. We were near great food and shopping and the neighborhood just had a really great feel to it. Joe and I agreed that, if Chicago wasn't so cold for so many months each year, we could totally move there. We arrived at Wrigley fairly early for the game so we walked around outside the ballpark for a while and then we headed in. Joe was so excited to finally be in a historic ballpark. Here's the view from our seats:

It was SOOOO cold at the game. I had to buy more clothing and I had to drink coffee without creamer just to try to stay warm. It was bad. We didn't even stay for the whole game because we were just too cold. After the game, we headed to a sportsbar in the near our hotel so we could watch the Redskins lose. Again. ::sigh::

Monday was a big, long day. We got an early start and headed down to the area of the Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum, and Soldier Field. We got down to that area pretty early so we started things off by taking a walk all the way around Soldier Field. I wanted to take as many pictures as possible for my Dad who gew up a Bears fan. The Bears were hosting Monday Night Football that night (against the Packers!) so things were hopping around the stadium. The pro shop was also open so I got to start my Christmas shopping early. After we finished shopping, we headed over to the Field Museum. Living just out of DC for my entire life, it was odd to have to pay to go into a museum. We had a good time strolling through and looking at their dinosaur bones. We had lunch in the museum - they had a Corner Bakery in there - and then we headed over to stand in line to get into the Shedd Aquarium. Yeah, we had to stand in line. They days that are free to go into the main part of the aquarium. No dolphin show or anything cool like that is included, but it's free. We opted to pay so that we could go see the dolphin show and some other things. They have the COOLEST dolphin habitat and show area. It looks like you're in the Pacific Northwest. And they have Pacific White Sided dolphins which are so much prettier than the dolphins you usually see.

After leaving the aquarium, we took a walk up through Grant Park (wher the Married with Children fountain is located) and Millenium Park. Then we realized we were a lot closer to our hotel than we thought so we just walked back to relax for a while before heading to dinner. We decided to head to Lou Malnati's for deep dish pizza for dinner. Lucky for us, the Bears MNF game was keeping the crowds down. We took the waiter's recommendation as to what we should order and he was OH so right. The pizza was amazing. I don't think we can ever eat at Uno's again because nothing they could offer us will compare to this pizza:

After diner, we headed back to the hotel to watch MNF. Chicago is such a great sports town. I swear everyone we saw on Monday was wearing Bears or Cubs gear (occasionally White Sox or Blackhawks too).

Tuesday was our final day and we had just a few things to wrap up. We had breakfast at our hotel and then headed to the John Hancock Tower. The views were so amazing! And David Schwimmer did the voiceover for our "guided tour". We got a little touch screen thing with headphones at the top and it walked you through the whole observation deck and pointed out things you might have missed otherwise. Definitely a good time. After that, we walked down the Magnificent Mile and window shopped. Finally, we headed over to Portillo's for Italian Beef Sandwiches. I grew up with Italian Beef Sandwiches from Portillo's being the food to eat when we headed to Illinois and I couldn't wait to share the experience with Joe. It took a while to get our sandwiches, but they were so worth the wait. And they sandwiches were so good, I forgot to take a picture of them until after we had both finished. Oops.

Resolutions

Wow, it's been a while since I've blogged, but since it's a new year I think it's time to start anew and make a conscious effort to blog on a regular basis. So, I'll start with my resolutions for the year.

1. Blog at least once a week.
-I (we) have been really bad about blogging. The thing is that I don't really feel like we do enough on a regular basis to blog daily, but we could do a blog a week.

2. Get healthy.
-This is more than just "lose weight" or "exercise". This is all of the above. Lose weight, exercise, change the way I eat and what I eat, take my vitamins, get enough sleep, and so on. I'm going to be 30 this year and I want to make sure that I start the next decade of my life off right.

3. Practice yoga at home.
-I take a yoga class once a week and I love it, but I think I've only actually done yoga in the house once. I really need to change this (part of the whole getting healthy thing) because yoga is just so good for me in so many ways. I have a couple of yoga DVDs and the WiiFit. I just need to use them. Also, my yoga instructor is offering a workshop in a few weeks all about how home practice and I think I'm going to go and see what she has to say about that.

4. Come up with and use a chore chart.
-I have a tendency to let certain chores go far as long as I can stand and then I spend a whole day cleaning. I really need to get in the habit (and get Joe in the habit too) of doing things on a regular basis so we don't have to scramble to clean the house if people are coming over and so I don't get so fed up with how things are that I spend the day cleaning like a mad woman.

5. Finish the "Year of the House" list.
-We're close, but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades so there's a lot to be done. I'm looking forward to our house being done.

I think that's enough for now. And I think all of these resolutions are things that I can accomplish.