bountifulplate

When my stepson was younger, we would play endless games of Monopoly and Trouble . Now, when he comes to visit us, we play at least one game of the Who Wants to be a Millionaire board game.  It's become a family "tradition." Lauren and I like to play card games, a favorite is War .  Last weekend, summer arrived here in the Midwest, so we took out our sprinkler and hooked it up. Since it was so toasty, I decided to join the "kids" in the sprinkler! I have also been known to do the Slip 'N Slide , but I'll spare you those pictures!! That water was COLD , but refreshing! When Lauren was born, for some reason, I thought I had to keep an immaculate house. One day, when she was a toddler, I had a "light bulb" moment and thought ahead to when she would be an adult. What would she remember? would she remember a mom who was always cleaning the house? or would she remember a mom that played with her?? When she graduated from high school almo...

As much as I love digital cameras and being able to see a picture instantly, I still like to have pictures that I can hold in my hands and look at.  I guess with Lauren just recently turning 17, I was getting a little nostalgic and started looking through old photos.  While sorting through a bunch I found this picture: The little girl sitting on the older man's lap is me when I was about a year and a half old.  The older man is my grandfather.  He passed away when I was about 5 1/2 years old.  I'm pretty sure that is one of my cousins sitting in the chair :)  One of the very few memories I have of my grandfather (my mom's dad) was riding in the front seat between him and my grandma in a car that had a green interior (a Buick maybe)?  I was so incredibly blessed to have had my grandmother for so long. This picture is from 20 years ago of my grandma and I, but it's a favorite: The picture below is her holding Lauren. She passed away when...

Don't certain foods remind you of certain people? Kolaches remind me of my mother-in-law, because she would always make them around Christmas. Below is a kolache making "lesson" my mother-in-law was giving Lauren and the hubby a handful of years ago. While looking through some old pictures recently, I stumbled across this picture from Christmas of 1988.  This was my grandmother and I horsing around with the turkey.  We had nicknamed the turkey, "Fred."  I can't remember why we named the turkey, maybe because it was the size of a toddler!!!! I have talked about my grandmother before, she was a really special person to me and a lot of other people.  She lived on her own into her 90's and then went into assisted living.  She passed away in 2004 at 101, the year Dominic was born.  I still use her metal mixing bowl whenever I bake, which is often  :) Food and memories just seem to go hand in hand.  My father-in-law was a great coo...

My grandmother was born on this day in 1903.  She had a great marriage to my grandfather until he passed in 1969. She was a wonderful mother to my mom and my uncle.  I don't remember ever seeing her upset or in a foul mood.  She had the most upbeat personality and I could talk to her about ANYTHING and she would just sit there and listen for however long I wanted to talk (and with my big mouth that could sometimes be a LONG time)! When we cleaned out her apartment to get ready to move her into assisted living I was lucky enough to get some of her possessions.  I got her yellow couch that she kept in her spare bedroom in her apartment.  I also got some metal mixing bowls that I use frequently. When I went through my many years of college she was one of my biggest supporters.  I remember when I was debating whether to take a typing class in high school she said, "Cathy, you can ALWAYS get a job if you learn to type!"  How very true that was....

When my beloved mother-in-law (who I affectionately called "Momma")  passed in January we had to clean out her room at the assisted living facility where she had lived for about 4 years.  My mother-in-law was always a stylish woman, she wore perfume and lipstick all the way up to the few days before she passed.  She had  tons of clothes in her closet.  When we moved her here from Cleveland, I started washing her clothes for her about once a week.  Whenever I would go over to visit her,  she always made a HUGE production out of me washing her clothes.  The caregivers and I had worked out a system so I knew which clothes were dirty and which were clean.  They would leave the buttons or snaps undone on the clothes hanging on their hangers in the closet,  so I could pull them right out of the closet and toss them into a bag to take home and wash.  There would also be a few articles of clothing in the dirty clothes basket too, but all of...

My 30th  high school reunion was this past weekend and living 10 hours away I had toyed with the idea of going to it, but decided it would just be too expensive and hard to work out.  I had lots of mixed feelings being that I didn't have the best experience in high school.  I think others out there can relate.  I was bullied at times by other girls, and actually couldn't wait for high school to be done so I  could graduate and move on with my life.  I have wondered sometimes what my high school friends were doing.  When I decided to join Facebook I hooked up with some of my old "peeps" and compared notes on our lives. My daughter is going into 10th grade and to her high school of course is the biggest thing in her life right now.  She is building much better memories than I had.   I have told her more than once that high school is just part of your life.  More things are waiting in the future - graduating high school, graduating col...

Being a stay-at-home for 15 years (hard to believe it's been that long) the weekends seem just like another day of the week.  Saturdays we usually go to Mass, hang out as a family and kind of goof off.  Sundays are reserved for washing clothes, getting ready for the week ahead and used to be when we would have my mother-in-law over for dinner.  My husband was an only child and my mother-in-law was very close to him.  As my mother-in-law got older and I got to know her better, I feel like she was one of my best friends.  I would wash her clothes and try to visit her as much as I could.  Starting with this time last year she started having a lot of memory problems.  Around the Christmas of 2010, she was admitted to the hospital because she wasn't eating.  As we soon discovered she had advanced dementia.  While the kids were at school my husband and I would go to the hospital and sit by her bedside.  She was really not able to communicate v...