A Camping We Will Go

Here it is almost midnight the night before we leave for the High Sierras in California.


Every year we go to these mountains for our family reunion, we do the camping and do all the outdoor things.


My husband and his family started this tradition when he was just a young boy.  There were six kids in his family and they went to these mountains with some special friends and their children.   They had a larger family and so this time they spent was a special  time for all.


As the years went by these mountain trips became a special vacation, but as the years also went by children grew and moved and things changed, but the tradition was kept with my husbands family.


The first time I had the experience of this kind of vacation, (as my family never went camping) was the first year we had moved back home after my husband had been discharged from the Navy.


Marta our young daughter had just turned 1 years old and as this was a new experience for me and as I was  5 months pregnant with our son Mark, Marta stayed home with my mom and dad for the week that we were gone.


That was 56 years ago and things were a lot primitive then, than they are now.  Yes, we had a old fashion outhouse.  Slept in a tent, still do, cooked over a camp stove, still do and did our dishes in a wash pan with water heated on an open fire, and the road going down to camp was an old dirt bumpy narrow road.  The camp ground was FREE and once you were there, you stayed there until it was time to go home.  There was no stores around, so you had to bring all your food and supplies for your week with you.


Now days things are different.  Roads are paved, stores are near by, there are camp tables and campfire rings, they even have trash cans, and bear safe boxes....and oh yes, the outhouses are now modernize, and yes, we now have to PAY for campsites........


But family traditions are still there. 


Now my husband and his brother are the seniors and our children and their children are taking their places and time marches on.


Tomorrow morning at 6 am we will leave for a week with our family.  We will sing, eat, play card and games, do some hiking and fishing, maybe some reading, lots of sharing and end the week with a fireside with stories, testimonies, laugh and tears and lots of hugs.


"I love the mountains, I love the rolling hills, I love the daffodils, I love the firesides."


I love this time of the year and I love the years and the memories I have with the many trips we took with our children and the experiences we had as we rode along in our family car or our VW bus and to the mountain we would go.  


I only wish all my children could be with us, but I'm grateful for the ones that can make it....  But the ones that can't be with us, I know they can close their eyes and let their hearts and minds take them back to years ago, when they were the young ones and they can feel the good times and the sweet smells that we all shared.....


When I'm in my tent tomorrow night and I can see the stars high in the sky, I'll say to my self,  "I love the mountains, I love the rolling hills, I love the daffodils, I love the firesides, when all the lights are low."  Night, Night and I'll sleep tight..

My Daddy's Birthday

Tuesday was my Daddy's birthday.  He would have been 96 years old.


All my life I had been told that he was born on his mother's birthday which was August 2nd.   I always remember celebrating this special day with both my dad and my Grandma.  She would come to our home and my mother would fix a special meal and we would always have ice cream and cake, we would sing Happy Birthday to both of them and then they would open presents and cards.


But when my dad past away in 2000 and I was helping my mother with the arrangements, we found his birth certificate and it said he was actually born on August 1, 1915.


Now this was such a surprise  to me, to say the least.  I asked my mom about this, just what does this mean???  I always thought Daddy was born on Nannie's birthday.  She said that was what she too believed... 


Strange things happen over the years..  I suppose because Daddy had been born the day before my Grandmothers birthday, she always felt that he was an early birthday gift to her, and so they always celebrated the two birthday's together and as the years went by, it just came to be, that his birth date was the same as hers.


When I found other documents and looked at them, my father's birthday was always listed as August 2, 1915, the only one that is different is his birth certificate.


Well, maybe that's not really true either... What about their marriage certificate or even my birth certificate.  You see my mother was 4 years older than my dad and that was always a sore spot in their relationship and so they sort of fudge on the years.  Mama became 2 years younger and Daddy became 2 years older.  But now, that's for another story.


Anyway, when it was time to select the tombstone for his grave and to decide on the engravings, I asked mama what date we were going to put on it for daddy's birth?  Her answer was August 2, 1915, that was his birth date, it had always been that way, so that's what we did.....


Now for family history and genealogy, I guess that another problem, but who cares?  To me and our family, daddy was born on his mothers birthday, and that's the day we celebrate and remember our daddy...


Happy Birthday Daddy, I love you very much and I miss you so...


I Love You....