Today is Frank's (Dad's) Birthday!!!
Happy Birthday, Dad!!

Posted on: Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Today is Mom's (Pat's) Birthday!!
Happy Birthday, Mom!

Today is Leo's birthday!!
Happy Birthday, Leo!!

Today is Kenneth's birthday!!
Happy Birthday, Kenneth!!

Congratulations to Mom & Dad on 33 years of marriage today!

We all love you VERY much!!

Posted on: Wednesday, August 27, 2008

 another chapter begins

As of Jan. 2, 2011, I will no longer be a employee of the House of Representatives. The new member is "taking a different path" and apparently I am not compatable with that path. And that's ok...things happen and we all move on. I loved what I did, but I am sure whatever happens next will bring just as much satisfaction if not more.

The door to the Governors office is still not closed, nor is the possiblity that Dad and I will just take the business up a notch and run it full time and just make sure it makes a living for us. We worked together for many years before 1991 and we made it. We can do it again. Is it scary? you bet it is..we are 20 years closer to retirement...or what should be retirement.

The good news is that I can officially retire from the federal governement, collect a very small penision and keep our federal health insurance for the rest of our lives. Not a bad outcome all things considered. One less thing to worry about.

I'll keep you posted as things change or stay the same....

 Thanks Everyone

Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes as well as keeping track of that little knock on the head.

I'm sorry all but this from Michelle and family were on Facebook, but, I'll take what I can get.

Hurray for Social Security. I start getting paid in December, sort of. I don't get the money from December until the 4th week of January, or until the system runs out of money, whichever comes first.

 Happy Birthday

Daddy!  We love you and miss you.  I hope you are feeling better and can have fun with the family.  Have a great day.

 Grandmas childhood installment #2

The delicious fragrance of the new mown hay understandably brings to mind immediately a summer day on the farm with Grandma and Grandma Steelewhere we spent so many childhood summers. The farm memories are seperate group. It is a though a definite line divided my life. The farm summers from the city or twon winters. The fragrance of the wet lilacs stabs at my whole being , likr the sharpest of arrows, while wave after wave of nostalgia sweeps over me. I am standing in the house in New Alexandria by the dining room window. There has just been a summer thunder storm. The window is put back up again to be let in the oh-so-fresh, clean cool air. A lilac bush grows outside the window. It is rain drenched. My parents are in the house.Grandma is there. I am a teen-ager. I smell the lilac. It is inchantment, sweetness, love, loved one, a wish for something unknown, on knows not what, just a longing.

The school room odor, a mixture of chalk, penscils, sweat, oiled floors, books; Ahh, yes! I was in 4th grade. We were having a quiet study period for spelling, I think. A boy across the aisle from me made funny faces and I laughed out loud. Miss Powe ( who later became mentally ill) was quite angry. She came back to my seat with a ruler and said "Hold out your hand". She gave it several sharp whacks. I was mortified. The whole episode is tied in with a late very warm spring day. Schoool would soon be over for the the summer. The schoolroom windows were up and the warm summer air was not cooling. Flies buzzed. It would not be long until the long long summer gegan and trips to the farm

My first counscious memeor is of  flat on Pennsylvania in Greensburg. I was around 3. The fla, as they were called them was a room two bedrooms. A large dining room, kitchen, and there must have been a dining room. I remember going down to a dark and mysterious basement with Mamma when she went down to wash. Papalet me look at this gold watch and play with a gold color razor case which had a purple felt cover. I called it "It's little bed". For some reason that little kit fascinated me. I had a playmate there, a boy of about my age named Billy Helwig.

Previous to this, we had moved from Irwin, where I was born. I belleve I was 9 months old when we went to Greensburg. Marcie was born at teh Steel farm.

Cora Buchanan Steele was the beloved daughter of John Alexander Steele and Melissa Margaret Sloan. Mamma never thought she had much in the way of look, but her young pictures show a sweet face with large, lovely eyes. Mamma was a small, dear. She seldom said anything bad about anyone. She was never real strong. She grew up in a strick Presbyterian  atmosphere. Dancing was forbidden to this young girl who was light and quick on her feet. When the neighbors, on the farm just up the lane and across the road, the Kepples, had a party and danced, how Mamma wished she might dance also. The Kepples were somwhat more liberal in their views.

When Mamma was 7 years old, a litttle brother was born, James Marquis. This particular Steel farm contained only 50 acres. Grandpa's brother, Uncle Mac Steele ( MacConnell Steel) had sold off some of the acreage to counsin John R. (Renwick) Steele, on the neighboring farm so he could have som cash to go to college. Uncle Mac was Grandpa's half brother. He later became a minister and later left the church of his ancesters to become an Episcopalian  and in later life became a Bishop at the larget Episopal church in Philidelphia.However, the small amount of acraegae left on the farm made it hard for Grandpa to mak a great amount of money. His main income was from the dairy cows.

To be continued:

off to bottle paints!

 Grandma's childhood thoughts installment #1

Childhood memories are ephemeral things. They are like a kaleidoscope, flashing on the mind suddenly, changing quickly to another scene. They are dreams, misled over with nostalgia, memories of loved ones. For the most part they are happy memories, as nature tends to forget the less pleasant. But they are seen down through the tunnel of time, colored by our own adult experiences.

Another thing about childhood memories is what triggers them, quite suddenly, in the midst of an activity, or a conversation. A or abusy day something will suddenly bring a picture to our minds in a hundrdth of a second. Sometimes is is a sound. A train whistle brings suddendly to my mind, my small bedroom in our home in Greensburg. We lived two blocks from the Pennsyvania Railroad Station where Papa worked. At night, going to sleep, I would hear the long drawn out tooooottt of the steam engine. If it were a long freight train with an engine in front and one in the back, the one would give a long whistle, fading into a thin distant sound, then would come the short toot-toot (or a long toot + short toot) and the second engine answering. Mama and papa  used to say the engines were talking to each other. I felt safe and secure and could dream of distant and enchanting places. Where were the trains going? Even the changed whistle of the deisel engines of today still triggers that memory and insdescribable lonely, lost and somewhat sad feeling (condradicts her previous statement of secure and safe?)

Another sound that triggers a later memory is the clear call of the cardinal in the early spring. Mother loved the cardinals. She watched them all winter, their brilliance against the snow of the Penna. winters. One spring morning in, about 1967 or '68 when we lived in Oakhill Lane, I lay in bed, just getting awake, in that twilight stage between sleeping and waking. Quite suddenly the clear, liquid call of the cardinal came through the windows. It pierced me through and through, a strange feeling of a presence came over me, it felt as if mother were right in the room. The feeling was so strong. I spoke about it. I was so strong that even after the passage of years it remains with me.

The thing that triggers a childhood memorie the most often, though, ist seems to be with me at least, are certain odors or fragrances.

One delightful fragrance of days gone by is that of burning leaves, in the fall. Today, local ordinances prevent the burning of leaves, what a sad omission! for some reason, the frangance of burning leaves causes to flash into my mind, like the sudden turning on of a light, the same scene over and over again.

I am somewhere between first and sicth grade. We are living in Greensburg, in the house where I grew up on Concord Street. We had a lovely back porch. On the one side, every year, mother planed morning glory vines. These lovely heavenly blues, climbed up cords whichwere attached close to the roof, making a beautiful wall of shade. Always there was an old fashened swing, hung by chains. Marcie and I guite frequently took the swing off the chaing, set it aside out of the way. Then reattached the chains to each other, as high or as low as we wanted. Mostly we wanted them high up toward the ceiling. Then we would put pillos or a blanket over them. By now we hd to get a kitchen chair or a step ladder to climb up and sit on this thrilling contraption and swing. Connected with this same flash back, are gypsies. In my childhood, gypisies far from being an ethnic group, as we read today (we do?), wer a mystery, combined with an enchanting fear. Never go near a gypsy. I never saw a gypsy, but the stories alone fired our imaginations. I guess because we always pictured them around a camp fire, the fragrance of burning leaves calls them to mind. It is all tied in with soft spring air or the sharp tang of fall and the swinging of the back porch. The days of the innocence.

To be continued.....

 see, if you all were on FB...

Your Dad would have gotten hundred of birthday wishes if he were on FB...heaven forbid we pick up the phone and/or write or send a card!! LOL! I will send him an email today....belated, but I did remember! I usually get his and Jimmys mixed up, but Jimmy is of course on FB, and FB keeps us all in line with birthdays!

Hope you all are doing well and your farm is doing well! Haven't heard alot this year how crops went!

I did hear that Aunt Shirley has moved back Russellville (again, thanks to FB!) and she is taking Rodney and the rest of the family to New York City in Jan. or Feb. to hear Meredith play at Carnagie Hall! Very nice trip for all.

I am back at work today...trying to catch up on missed tasks from Friday.

Talk to everyone later!

 Daddy's birthday

Celebration was attended by 8 people and 6 dogs.  A good time was had by all.

 Back from Ohio

We made a quick trip to Ohio top pick up glass and some bisque and drop off an order. Left Thursday evening, got back last night (Saturday) about 8:30. LONG drive.

Today is laundry day for me and studying and paper writing for Dad. Right now, I am just sitting here watching 3 deer nibble the grass about 10 feet from the back door. A momma and her two little ones.

This coming week will just be work, school, more work and more school. No special events that I can remember now...oops, Stanleys birthday was yesterday! Need to write him...

Lets everyone catch us up to date on the blog so we can start out the fall with a baseline of activity! Pretty soon the holidays will be upon us and everyone will be so busy they won't even be doing Facebook! LOL!

<heading out to dryer>

 I AM NOT EVEN GOING TO SAY shhhh (31)

I WILL NOT ACCEPT THAT MY YOUNGEST SON IS 31 . . . THIS IS JUST A REALLY BAD DREAM . . .

BUT, EVEN THOUGH YOU ARE REALLY OLD!!!

 Happy Birthday

William!  have fun and enjoy.  We love you!  Hope school and everything else are going well.