Happy Halloween!!

Happy Halloween everyone!  I love this holiday...definitely one of my favorites.  I miss getting little goblins dressed up and taking them out to Trick or Treat.  This was always a time of year I really looked forward to.  We don't get many little ghosties in our neighborhood anymore so it's kind of boring now.  But I live vicariously through those that do come to our door and through pictures of my little nieces and nephews. 

I never did get my Halloween decorations up.  I tried to get them out of the garage myself but fear of bodily harm stopped me.  Dan has been so busy with work and softball, he hasn't had time to dig them out.  I'm a little disappointed but I'm thinking I may stop on the way home from work tonight and see if I can find a pumpkin to carve.  I haven't done that in years....that should put me in the holiday spirit.

I've posted these pics in the past but I think they're worth a repost.  These were two of my very favorite costume years. 



 Halloween 1991---My little surgeons (l-r: Sarah - 6, Stephen - 5, Beth - 2 1/2)

Halloween 1992---Batman and the Witches (l-r: Beth - 3 1/2, Stephen - 6, Sarah - 7)

Hope you and all your ghosts and goblins have a wonderful time on Sunday.  I hope they collect enough candy so you can raid their stash....isn't that what the holiday is all about anyway?

Have a great weekend and an even better week!


Quote for the Week:

Nothing on Earth so beautiful as the final haul on Halloween night.
~Steve Almond~

What's In A Name?

This week I re-started a very old project.  It's been sitting in a plastic tub in my bedroom closet for the last 10 years.  I've thought often of this project and wished I could return to it.  I just knew it would be too time consuming for a working mom with three kids and no real time to devote to the project.  So, there it sat, waiting for me.  I bet you all think it's some gigantic afghan that I never finished crocheting.  It's not, but much like yarn becomes an afghan with patience and lots of hard work, the subject of my project evolved over centuries with love, dedication, and hard work.  This project is all about my family.  My father's family to be exact.  This week I re-opened my genealogy files.  I'm very excited to see what new information develops since my last quest.  Many things have changed over 10 years.  Not the least of which is the fact that I am no longer a busy mom.  That has been a much lamented theme of this blog.  Well, maybe now I've found that something extra to keep me busy.  Also, the internet has so much more to offer these days than it did 10 years ago.  So off I go in quest of the Dion ancestry.

I've always been fascinated by my French-Canadian heritage.  I don't know why exactly.  I'm really a Heinz 57 mixture of nationalities.  Some German, Irish, English and yes, even a little Polish (this explains a lot about me, doesn't it?).  But whenever someone asks what nationality I am, I always say French-Canadian.  Maybe because it has a more exotic and romantic sound to it than saying you're German.  Or maybe it's because those people to the north are just so darn nice, eh?  In all reality, it probably has a lot to do with the stories my grandmother told.  The ones where we are related to the famous Dionne quintuplets.  The first surviving quintuplets in history.  What little kid wouldn't be fascinated by that?  So, I grew up being fascinated with being French-Canadian and loving my last name.  I had a very hard time giving it up when I got married but I was too much of a traditionalist to keep it.  I'm so looking forward to finding all my Dion ancestors and finding out if they are as fascinating as I've always imagined they would be.

Here are a few pictures of my father and his family:

This is my dad, Art (right) and my Uncle Ted (left).  There are no dates on these pictures so I have to guess.  I'm thinking this one is probably around 1934.  There are pictures of my youngest brother John at around this same age...you'd think it was the same person.

This one I'm guessing is probably around 1939 or 1940.  Again my dad on the right and my uncle on the left.  They really were cute boys!

Here's one of the whole family.  Again my dad is on the right.  Was there some kind of picture rule back then that the oldest had to be on the right?  I wonder.  I'm going to guess this picture is somewhere between 1945 and 1947 give or take.  See that great wave in the front of my dad's hair....he gave that to me.  The wonders of DNA.

So there you have it.  The beginnings of my ancestry hunt.  I'll keep you posted from time to time on how it's going.  Wish me luck!

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.

Quote for the Week:

We inhereit from our ancestors gifts so often taken for granted...Each of us contains within...this inheritance of soul.  We are links between the ages, containing past and present expectations, sacred memories and future promise.

~Edward Sellner~

It's Finally Here!!! And Other Randomness

So fall has finally decided to show her little head to all us desert dwellers.  I was starting to worry....it was 102 last Saturday...I had lost all hope.  Then we had a storm which dumped huge amounts (well, huge for this part of the world) of water and even some hail:

Ours was the size of a shooter marble...you remember those don't you?  Some area's of town had golf ball size hail and there was a lot of damage all around town, fortunately that part skipped us.  The storm really cooled down the temps and it was 64 when I went to work this morning.  It was heaven.  So, yeah, I'm looking forward to the weeks to come.

Something else that comes with fall.....hockey!!  The season starts this weekend.  I'm excited for the games to begin, and hopefully my Coyotes will fare better than my poor D-Backs.  The Coyotes seem to be our only hope this fall since the Cardinals look like they're going back to the pre-Kurt Warner days...lose, lose and lose again.  I sure wish Kurt hadn't given up his cleats for dancing shoes......

Last Saturday Dan and I had our anniversary party.  Lots of family and friends with us to share the evening...it was lovely and I feel very blessed indeed.  Everyone took lots of pics which still have not been downloaded or emailed to me....I'll share some of those when I get them.  I did take this picture with my phone, I wanted a picture of the kids to post on Facebook.  This picture proves that no matter how old they get, I still cannot get a decent picture of the three of them together without some kind of tomfoolery going on.  It's so frustrating....every year since they were little, trying to get a picture for the Christmas card went something like this:

Beth laughing...at nothing, Sarah dutifully trying not to laugh...at Beth, and Stephen being irritated with both of them and the whole picture taking in general.  I guess the more things change the more they stay the same...they're still cute...even when they irritate me :o)

As you can tell from my backround change, I'm really in the mood to decorate for Halloween.  I think that's going to be my project for this weekend.  I usually wait for Dan to pull stuff out of the garage which means that I never decorate because Mr. Procrastinator never gets the stuff out.   This year I'm going to take my life in my hands and get the stuff out myself.  One of two things is going to happen: I may injure myself trying to get the stuff out of the garage or my husband may injure me for daring to mess with his unorganized organization.  I'll let you know what happens.

OK, that's enough randomness for one day.  I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Quote for the Week:

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
~Albert Camus (1913-1960)~

Everyone's Home

So, this is a very busy week and this post will be short and sweet.  I'm sure you're all happy about that ;-)    Preparations for the big anniversary party this weekend are in full swing.  The weather is not cooperating however, as it's suppose to be 103 on Saturday.  Did I mention we were having this thing in our backyard?  I'm glad everyone loves me...although after Saturday they may rethink.

Sarah came home yesterday so I am in Mom heaven having all my kids home with me.  Just to prove a point that kids never grow up, I give you this picture:

Sarah (25) and Stephen (24) playing Super Mario Bros. on the Wii.  You should have seen how excited she was when she found out he had the game.  They are still cute!

In other kid news I was able to totally embarrass my 21 year old daughter by rocking out to Katie Perry's "California Gurls" while we were in the car the other day.  It felt just like the old days and I loved it!!

I hope everyone has a great weekend!!

Quote for the Week:

Human beings are the only creatures that allow their children to come back home.
~Bill Cosby~