Catchup Post

I attended a tech conference this month and we spent a lot of time on social networking.  We were challenged with re-activating blogs, twitter accounts etc.  So I decided to reactivate the blog.  I didn't realize it had been so long since I had posted.
So to catch up.
Well, too many things have happened since then to go into a lot of details but as a single woman professional working in a non-profit I find myself now supporting my daughter and my "grand twins". She lost most everything in the economic and emotional crisis last year and is slowing putting her life back together.

I love having her and the twins with me. Sometimes we don't realize how lonely we are until we aren't. It's a delight to have them come upstairs every morning to wake me, and their giggles delight me.

On health issues  I'll quote my grandfather. "If I'd known I was going to live this long I woulda taken better care of myself."

I'll try to cover a few of the interesting things of the last half year in the next few posts.

Birthdays and Holidays

It seems my family is very accommodating. We try to have our birthdays near a holiday so everyone get's a "two-fer". My birthday and my brother's are during Lent with Easter Sunday always being very close to one of our birthdays, with one sister just ahead of us.  Several of us have our birthdays in early October around Columbus Day with my mom and dad bracketing Halloween.   Michelle has her birthday a week after Christmas, Zoe and Eddie have their birthday just before Thanksgiving, along with Hank, Miki's S.O.  Angie being our only stand-alone.The following is a quick view of  some holiday pictures from 2008 to catch us up to date. 
Zoe with pumpkin faced pizza.  Most of the vegetables got eaten before they made it to the pizza.
Then November brought the beginning of a long white winter with a guarantee of a white Christmas.

Halloween 2008

As I've mentioned before I live in a very small town in rural NW PA.  Among other things I rarely see a child for trick or treat on Halloween.  I'm sure there are blocks in town that do see the monsters, goblins, witches and fairies but my street is small and San Francisco steep and until my grand twins joined me it had no children.

In 2008 Angie and the kids were living in Millvale which is a suburb of Pittsburgh and I decided to join them for Halloween. Millvale is a small community between Girtys Run and the Allegheny River.  It is often flooded, but it has a wonderful sense of community that I've not seen many other places.

There are wonderful stories about Samuel Girty, the first white settler.  Apparently he was captured by Indians, saw his father killed, and once released couldn't handle the transition to white society so he settled in what was to become Millsvale.  There is also some question as to his loyalty later when the Revolutionary War broke out. 

This was once a mill town and boasted about 7000 residents and is now a blue-collar suburb of Pittsburgh with about 4800 residents.  It is an area crowded with children and one that loves to get into every event.  For Halloween what seemed like hundreds of kids trick or treated the main roads of Millvale down to where the trolley was waiting  to take everyone back across town to the firehall.  Adults, many in costume lined the main road to give out treats, some coming from houses on side streets just so they could enjoy the sight.
The firemen were offering soup, hot dogs, fun and small toys to all the people who attended and it was packed.

The kids enjoyed being in costume with lots of other people, and I enjoyed being part of a "small town Halloween experience."