Days with the Dorans

We are in the process of moving some of our pictures off our computer and on to an external hard drive.  I saw these pictures and they were too cute to just keep on the computer.  These pictures were taken the night before Jonasen's second Christmas (he was 15 months old), three days before his sister was born...

I always worry that I will forget the little funny things our kids say (which is why I write much of what they say here). Of course, this blog was after Joe and Al were first learning to talk and much of what they did and said at those ages I have forgotten. Yesterday (thanks to facebook and my niece Mary), I was reminded of a three year old Joey and it made me smile. Mary and the rest of the Dorans had been talking at dinner about something Joey had said, "And then they took the baby Jesus and THREW him in the river!" Yes, Joe had his babies mixed up but it was cute just the same but it triggered in me something else that Joe used to do/say. When he was little, Joe used to refer to any crosses as "God" (much like Sean refers to them as 't'). Any time we would pass a church with a large cross he would say, "Look there is a big God!" If he saw someone with a cross necklace he would say, "There is a little God!" Joe found crosses an...

Recently I was in my basement and stumbled across some pictures of our old house. I sat down and looked at them and floods of memories came back. I bought the house in 2000 after saving every dollar I could from my teaching job and working weekends at Marshall Field's in their shoe department as a cashier. I bought the house shortly after Jeff had proposed and I remember my friends all being so excited over my engagement! I also remember being perhaps more excited over the house... (I always knew that Jeff and I would end up being married... I never had imagined I would have been able to purchase a home all by myself!). I didn't have much. The house was pretty close to my childhood home and so a truck brought over my bed and childhood bedroom furniture and my parents old couches. I bought a card table to eat at and I remember thinking that it was OK that I would never be able to go out again (I had so much still to buy for the house), because I loved everything about that ...

Thirteen years ago around this time, I was spending hours setting up my first grade classroom. I was fresh out of college, knew "everything" and had the energy of a young twenty-two-year-old! Thirteen years later, I am spending hours setting up my first grade classroom, brushing up on some of my favorite 'teacher reads', admit that each year I learn perhaps more than my students and have all the energy of a thirty-four-year-old with four kids at home, a husband and two humane society specials... (sigh) It blows my mind that the first graders pictured are beginning a new chapter in their lives, perhaps heading off to college and naive to how fast life is going to suddenly fly by. I am still teaching in the same building but it has certainly changed... we now have carpeting, computers, phones in our room, and AIR-CONDITIONING! I remember that on some days it would get so hot, the PTA would buy Popsicles and we would sit in silence sucking away on the sweet, refreshin...

I started blogging as a fun way to share what my family was doing with far-away friends. Little did I know that it would become so much more. By writing down my thoughts, I feel like I have made my memories somewhat concrete. This is a good thing because I have a HORRIBLE memory and find that things that I DO remember have come mostly from old pictures, diaries and letters that I have replayed in my mind. One of the wonderful blogs out there does something called "Wednesday Walks"- it's really just a set aside day to write something from your memory. I love this idea especially since this blog has taken the place of my diaries and scrapbooks and is now mostly meant as a keepsake for my children, grandchildren and perhaps more- long after I leave this earth. If you have popped over to my "Pause" blog you may have found that I love to write, and that all started with this man- my Grandpa Jonasen . We were pen pals for years and while it may seem odd for a young ...