Family stories and history

My mom and dad and grandparents have all passed away.  Their stories of growing up and meeting and living their lives are only left in my memory.  I wish I would've written down their stories.  I wish I would've paid more attention.  Now, how exactly did yall meet?  And why did you move down here?  And what made you quit college?

My dad was an amazing story teller.  He did write down some of his anecdotes, thankfully. But I still have questions that I wish I would have asked.  I still wish I would have listened a little closer.  But as a kid, it's just the same old stories that mom and dad tell, blah blah blah.

But as I get older, I am curious.  I don't remember my great grandparents at all.  But I'd love to know their stories.  My mom documented all the family genealogy. For that, I am grateful.  But they are just names.  Dates of birth, dates of death, counties of marriage etc.  Who were they?  Why did they fall in love? What were their triumphs? their defeats?  their life changing moments?

I'd love to pass some stories down to my kids and grandkids.  But I'm sure they are about as interested as I was at their age.

That's part of the reason for this blog.  My social media posts will be lost to history someday.  FB and Instagram will be as obsolete as Myspace.  But hopefully, the stories I've written in this blog can survive.  And hopefully, someday my descendants will stumble upon them and know a little bit about who I was.  I wasn't just a date of birth and date of death.   Maybe it will shed some insight onto their own journeys and personalities.  Who knows?  

So ask your living relatives now their stories!  Video them!  Write them down.  Save for your posterity. You might not be interested in it now.  But someday you will and you don't want that moment to be lost forever.

The Love of the Library!

I grew up surrounded by books.  My dad was an avid reader and always had a book in his hand, or laying on his chest during naps. hehe.

We had this set of encyclopedias that I was just enamored with.  Back in the day - the encyclopedia was our internet.  If you wanted to know about something, anything, you'd either read an entire book on the subject or you could find the encyclopedia that started with the letter you needed and read a short entry about it.

While my dad was a reader, my mom was a researcher.  She had the genealogy bug and we would spend a lot of Saturdays at the library.  (Now you know why I'm such a nerd 🤓)

Some of my best memories are just being "let loose" in the library.  We could roam around and explore.  Which book caught my eye?  I could just walk up and down the aisles and browse or if something peaked my interest, I'd head over to the card catalog and look up some books on that subject.

Oooh, the smell of the books.  The perfect organization of that card catalog.  All those type written cards, and numbers all perfectly labeled and ordered.  My OCD was in hog heaven.

While my mom was going through the microfiche machine and scouring old newspapers and death certificates,  we were reading. We were learning.  We were learning to love the library.

So when I had kids of my own, I had to introduce them to one of my favorite places! We went to the library at least once a week.  I would let them have the same autonomy and roam the aisles.  Although, there weren't any more card catalogs, and computers and entered the scene, the kids still had just as much fun as I did in the library.

We would take home heaps and heaps of books and I would lay them out on the coffee table for random reading sessions.  I would read to the kids, they would read to me, and sometimes I'd just curl up on the couch and read my own book, or something the kids had picked out.

Now all my books are via Kindle.  I still love a good book in my hands though.  I just started reading this book that is about a library fire!  It got me reminiscing about libraries.  It brought back a lot of great memories.

I hope my grandkids are readers.  I hope to introduce them to the library someday too.

The GOOD of 2020 Year in Review

We all know what a weird year it has been.  So for this year in review, I'd like to tell you all the GOOD things that have happened this year. (in no particular order)

We got to go to Amsterdam before everything shut down! (one of my bucket list places!)

Fun girl/sister trip to Cabo!

We had a beautiful kitchen/bath/floor remodel

Lots of great aerial yoga classes with my sister!

Took a trip to North Carolina to see family!

My sister took me on an adventure course!  Terrifying but fun!!

So many fun concerts, outdoor music, hooping times!

I turned 49!!!😜

I learned a little bit of the ukulele!  So I can learn new things! haha!

Got to vacation in Dominican Republic!

I had my 2nd grandson born (my 4th grandchild)!

Many trips to go see grandkids!

So I guess it wasn't such a bad year after all!  Like the old song goes, "You've got to accent the positive and eliminate the negative and latch on to the affirmative and don't mess with mister in between." 🎵

Here's to a great 2021!!!!  

🎉🥳😘💗🙏

Lamentations 3:23-24 

"Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not.They are new every morning;Great is Your faithfulness, “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,“Therefore I hope in Him!”

Couple more Christmas stories!

 Couple more Christmas stories...

Once when we were kids, we woke up Christmas morning to find 2 strings beside our bed.  We followed those strings around the whole house!  Under couches, under beds, through the backyard, under bushes, around trees, back into the house, down the hall, under doors, when we finally made it to the end.. there were 2 nice presents!  I think I got a stereo and my sister got a bike or vice versa...can't remember.  But I remember following that string around the house!  

Here's a fun one:

When we lived in Colorado one Christmas, my parents mailed the kid's gifts up to us.  We stuck them under the tree and waited for Christmas.  Larry came home that week and said, I have good news and I have bad news.  What you want first?  Me-bad news of course.  He said, I lost my job!  Yikes!  What's the good news (he's a glass full kinda guy)  We get to go to Texas for Christmas!   

So we packed up the car, and the unopened gifts that my parents had sent and made the 14+ hour drive down to Dallas for Christmas.  While we were here, we got to talking about what to do next since Larry was out of a job.  We decided, hey let's just move back to Texas!  We talked about it all the way home (put the presents that my parents had sent back in the car!)  By the time we got back to Colorado, we had decided! Yes we'd move back!  

FIVE days later we were packed up in a moving truck (along with those presents!  which at this point had gone from Texas to Colorado to Texas to Colorado and now back to Texas)  and off we went!  

It was the year of Y2K so, we waited till that morning to see if the world had ended and since it didn't, we drove down to Texas. :)

Christmas time is here

Christmas is one of my all time favorite holidays.  I have so many wonderful memories as a kid with my grandparents at Christmas.  

I'm going to share a few stories the next few blog posts about some of my favorite times.

We used to go to my grandparents for our Christmas break.  They lived about 2 hours away.  We would drive an hour and they would drive an hour.  We'd meet halfway at the Dairy Queen, grab some burgers and a dilly bar and load up in Mamaw and Pop's car and head to their house.

When we got there, the Christmas spirit would begin!  My mamaw would have several small wrapped presents for us to open each day heading towards Christmas.  Now, they weren't wealthy by any means.  But she would find the simplest little things and wrap them up.  I remember we'd always get a tiny Hallmark calendar (that you'd get for free at the store), and some pens, and just little trinkets that we thought were just divine.  My love language is gifts so it was especially nice for me!

Then Pop would say, let's go get a tree!  🎄We'd go in his back woods and us girls would want the biggest tree.  Pop would say, "How about this one (kind of a small sgraggly thing that he could actually drag back to the house)."  We'd get excited and bring it in.  Mamaw would put it in a nice pot and put it up on a table.

When we'd get to decorating!  We didn't have store bought decorations.  So we'd pop corn and string cranberries, make paper chains, and cut pictures out of magazines! It was the most beautiful tree!!

Christmas morning we'd wake up before the sun was even thinking of coming up! We wanted to  go open our presents so bad!  After several, "Go back to bed girls-it's too early!!", they'd finally relent and let us get up!

                                        

Paper and boxes would be flying as we opened all kinds of goodies!  My pop would put on a roaring fire in the fireplace (no matter if it was 80 degrees!) to burn all the paper and boxes.  We would always lose our instructions to the new games or pieces to stuff because Pop was cleaning up and throwing stuff in the fire just as fast as we could open it!  (hmmm, wonder where I get that cleaning bug from!)

Meanwhile, Mamaw was in the kitchen making everything yummy!  Little mini pecan pies, ham, fresh veggies, those rolls! Yummmy!!  

We'd all enjoy a nice meal, and play with our new stuff and enjoy each other's company. 

Lots of laughter and good times.

Happy 31 baby!!

 Next week, Larry and I celebrate 31 years of marriage!! In this day and age, that's kind of a shocker.  

We had a whirlwind romance,  our first date was on my 18th birthday.  We went to Reunion Tower in Dallas and had a big fancy dinner and I was impressed!  We were engaged 3 months later and married 3 months after that.  Larry asked me to marry him on the top of a mountain in Colorado!!  

Larry took me to Lake Louise, Canada for our honeymoon!  Growing up in Dallas, I had never really seen snow before.  Well, in Canada in November, there is a LOT of snow!  We even went skiing!  We stayed at the fancy Chateau Lake Louise, right on the frozen lake.  It was an amazing adventure!  That started my love for travel!!  I was like, there is a giant world out there and I want to see it!

A lot has changed in the last 31 years!  3 grown kids, new son and daughter in law, 4 grandkids!  We moved maybe 14-15 times.  We've gotten to travel everywhere!  Come see our push pin map sometime!

But the thing that's changed the most is my love and devotion to Larry.  I had no idea what I was getting myself into (in general with marriage, but also being married to LARRY KILGORE!😜)

It's been a fun ride and I can't wait to see all the new adventures we take.  It's just the best with you, Larry!!

Happy 31 years!!!  💕🤟  Here's to many many more!

Something to lighten up your Friday

It's been a bit of a heavy week, so just to lighten things up--here's a few true funny stories that really happened to me!

One day I was poaching an egg in the microwave.  I pulled it out of the microwave after it was done and I was standing there face over it looking at it.  When all of a sudden the egg explodes!  Right in my face! BURNING HOT!  Larry, being the quick thinker that he is, was standing at the sink and he pulled the sprayer out and sprayed me right in the face. Well, it cooled me off, kept my face from burning.  But now I was standing there in my pjs, covered in egg and soaked head to toe.  I just died laughing!

Another one..this one kinda recent.

As we were walking back to the hotel in Amsterdam, it was cold and I had my hands in my coat pockets.  There was a small little bump in the sidewalk.  Just enough to catch my shoe.  As I was falling toward the sidewalk, hands in pockets, I thought -Man I don't want to hit my face-so I turned ever so slightly and landed rather ungraciously on the sidewalk on my elbow and knee.  I wasn't hurt bad but still... had to laugh.


One from my childhood. 

My sister and I were so excited that the snow cone man was coming down the street!  We ran to get our change and ran out to get our yummy snow cones!  As we were walking back to the house, my sister was just eyeing her snow cone and just couldn't wait to dig into it..  the newspaper guy just happened to be driving down the street right at that time.  He threw the paper into our yard and it hit my sister right on the back of the head causing her snow cone to just fall right into the grass.  Poor thing!  You can't really wash a snow cone off either.  Was that newspaper guy aiming at us?? 

Ok..one other.

For some reason, things fly out from the sky and find me.  We were all sitting in our backyard one time, playing a game at a table when all of a sudden a baseball flew down and landed right in my stomach!  No one else saw it fly down but there I am on the ground! And then, another day, we were at a playground when a bicycle helmet came flying out of nowhere and conked me on the head. Ha! Still don't know where that thing came from.

Looking back this past year

Well, 2019 is almost over.  I can't believe it's going to be 2020!  This past year has had it's good and bad, for sure.  Here's just a few of the happenings:

I lost my uncle and brother in law at the beginning of the year.

But on a happier note, we had 2 grandkids born this year!

We got to take a wonderful trip to Croatia and Slovenia!

I did an actual TRAPEZE swing!

I started doing trapeze yoga with my sister!

Larry and I celebrated 30 years of marital bliss! 

I finished my Invisalign!

We went to New Mexico to visit our son over Thanksgiving!

Lots of fun weekend trips to see our grandbabies, daughter and her family.

Celebrated 5 years at my job!

So many fun concerts, times with friends, games and good times!

Here's to new beginnings!  His Mercies are new every morning!  My word for this past year was relationships.  Although some became distant, others drew closer.

I don't have a word yet for this next year but I would like to continue to work on relationships, and keep my heart and mind serving the King of Kings.  

On to 2020!!

Are you having a holly jolly Christmas?

It's the most wonderful time of the year..right??  Well why is everyone in such a grumpy mood?  Especially parents to their kids?

We were out yesterday doing Christmas-y things.  Seeing the pretty trees and lights and enjoying the season.  I went into a restroom and a mom was yelling at her little girl, then I went out and a mom was yelling at her kids to "not smile that way in the picture".  Geez.

Momma, I know you are frustrated.  You feel like you have to do all the things for the holidays and make it "special" for everyone.  And you are at the end of your rope.  But please don't take it out on your kids.  They have feelings too.

What do you want them to remember at the holidays?  You getting all the things done but being a complete grumpy pants about it?

Enjoy the season!  So what if the cookies don't get made, or the gifts bought or wrapped.

Stop and sing a song, do the Charlie Brown dance, play a game.

Make some positive memories with your kids.

When you start to feel anxious or frustrated.  Stop, breathe, smile, pray.  Let it go.

Christmas will come and go and what will be left.  The paper will all get thrown away, the cookies all eaten. And what will be left?

The memories.

Make some good ones.  Treat others (your kids) the way you'd like to be treated.

Love them. Kids are people too.

After all it is the most wonderful time of the year.

Country songs and memories

We've been watching this amazing series on PBS about the history of Country Music.  I don't really listen to country music nowadays but I grew up on it.  I started watching it just because I love PBS and anything Ken Burns does is always good.  I love me a good documentary.  As I watched, the power of the music just hit me between the eyes.  All these songs, they were reminding me of my childhood.

My dad was a storyteller. And he loved music.  He loved all kinds but especially loved the kinds of music that told stories.  He knew all the words too.  He could sing every verse.

When we used to take long car rides, one of the things we would do is sing.  When we couldn't get anything on the radio, dad would start belting out an old folk song and we'd join in.  He'd sing it again and again until we had the words down.  This was one I remember singing.  And this silly one. 

Watching this documentary and learning about the history of country music, has really brought back just a flood of memories for me.  

I can just see my dad in his youth singing along to these songs.  He was really an old cowboy at heart.  

I'm so glad he taught me these songs.  I'm enjoying reminiscing.  And I'm missing you, dad.