The Terrible Catsafterme

For Christmas 1979, Dad bought the family a black and white video camera. On that Christmas, we opened it up on Christmas morning, so we were only able to actually record the aftermath of the holiday morning. 1980 was the first time where we were able to create a nearly complete record of the events of Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. This time period represents the very heart of the incredibly fond memories I have of Christmas with my family – a run of about eight years where I was a fully, cognizant child…and Denise still believed in Santa Claus. Read the rest of this entry »

Most likely because this was our first Christmas with Denise, my parents decided to take over the duties of hosting Christmas Eve. For the previous six years of my parents’ marriage and the first five years of my life, it had been held at Carl and Arline’s house, but now the torch was passed on to us. From here on in, as long as my parents were together, Christmas Eve would be at our place. Surprisingly Dad did not take any home movies of Denise’s first Christmas. Read the rest of this entry »

Today is my Mom’s 58th birthday. Goodness, that seems like a high number – but she pulls it off with her young-at-heart attitude. To celebrate, I thought I would share some uncommon, unrelated, and mostly random photos of my Mom from the 1960’s as she passed from little girl, through her teen years, and into adulthood. There isn’t typically ample opportunity to group photos from this time period into much of a cohesive-themed posting – since there are so few of them in existence. But here’s a batch of cool, nostalgic photos in both glorious black and white and brlliant Technicolor. Enjoy. Read the rest of this entry »

Woodland Altars was the Church of the Brethren campsite where I would spend a week for every Summer between 1981-1990 – in addition to periodic visits throughout the 1970’s and stays at the chalets throughout the 1990’s and 2000’s. I spent my very first weekend there during a trip around May 1972. At about eight month olds, I obviously enjoyed my surroundings, especially considering I had Lora and Robby there to help entertain me. Also along on the trip were Bill and Dottie, and Dad’s cousin John Shirk and his wife Patty. Dad took a Super 8 film of some of our antics around the camp and it appeared that there were a few other people with us, possibly folks camping nearby. Read the rest of this entry »