Week 29 of 2012 - Wedding Days...

Wedding days are different for everyone. They range from simple to lavish affairs, large social events to a Justice of the Peace and a bride and a groom. Each is unique in it's own way. They are personally interpreted by the bride and groom with or without the input from other family members. There is one thing that is common to them all; two people who love each other.

Personally, I never really understood the fancy wedding event myself. All the planning, what to wear, what color shoes, what flowers to have, what jewelry.... I was never really a girlie girl! I like to look nice but don't love clothes, shoes, makeup and getting all gussied up. Give me a pair of comfortable jeans and my favorite Tee shirt and I am happy! Oprah...I hear ya...it just isn't me! That is probably why I ended up picking the career choice that I did. Who ever heard of a woman who fixed computer especially in 1980 anyway!

So, having said all that, I had small events. My first marriage, when I was 16 years old, was to my high school sweetheart. My Grandfather, Rev. Everett Smith, married us in a ceremony at our church. It was lovely and simple. We had a luncheon in the fellowship with cake and in a couple of quiet hours it was done. That was May 28^th 1972.

Nineteen years later, we were divorced. I was a single mother for 6 years before I married my second time. My second marriage was also a simple event. Most of the guest thought they had been invited to a pig roast in our back yard. The wedding ceremony itself was held under a tent in our backyard with our families present at 2 PM before the other guests arrived.

Greg's friend Jeff,  Greg, Jan and sister Sue - August 9, 1997

A pig roast reception August 1997

 

The pig roast was scheduled for 4 PM. It was a really nice party. We had a 200 pound pig which roasted in a cooker in the side yard for 8 hours. Everyone was encouraged to bring a dish to share. Each time a spot opened up on the table someone would arrive with a new dish.  We had plenty of food. We provided drinks, 14 dozen ears of corn and the pig. We had 8 pounds of pork left from a 200 pound pig.

Our campfire at the end of the evening with the party in the background.

I am realizing, as I age, that I am a not exactly comfortable being the center of attention. Which is an unlikely Leo trait! I am not sure why I feel this way but I do. I would much rather help to make someone else the center of attention. It could be because I am a middle child in a family of 6 kids...there is not much attention in the middle of a group. The oldest seems to get it and the youngest. I don't mean that as bad thing but just a fact. For most women, their wedding day is the biggest and most important day of their lives. Many woman bask in the attention of it. It was not something that I thought or dreamed much about. So my weddings, fit my personality to a tee!

Week 28 of 2012 - Burn Baby Burn

I am a week behind again. All these hot temperatures must be frying my brain because I just can't seem to write. It is not that I don't have memories of sunburn. I have pretty fair skin ...the type that burns and then turns brown if it doesn't peel... When I was a child we never worry about getting too much sun. We did not use sunscreen. It was in the days before sunscreen. We probably burned some early in the summer but we spent so much time outside all year round that I think we were rather used to the sun!  Each day as we played, we got browner and browner. And each day our hair got whiter and whiter. As a kid, it was OK to have white hair because you only had it in the summer. These days, my hair is white year round!

As a teenager and young adult, we would actively try to get a tan. Just before Memorial Day, the lawn chairs in Michigan would begin to emerge and so did the tanning babes. By now we had learned a thing or two about tanning. For most people it was bring out the baby oil and fry a few times until you skin got used to it and before you knew it you had a nice tan going. It was at about this time when I discovered Bain de Soleil Orange tanning gel. I used it for probably 20 years and loved it. When my children were small, their nap time was my tanning time.  You could just feel the sun's heat as it permeated through your muscles all the way down to warm your bones...At last, the chill of winter in your bones is gone. And if you relaxed enough, off to sleep you would got too. That's when you got in trouble. You would lay on one side too long and burn, baby, burn. I also learned that apple cider vinegar worked pretty well on a sunburn provided you did not care if you smelled like a pickle and you kept the jar handy for the second and third applications that you would need...

Pool party at the Tietz's summer of 1985 - it may have been for my birthday in August.

Eventually my family and I moved to Arizona and I thought that I was in heaven. There I could get sun for most of the year and the first few years I did. We had a swimming pool, my children were older and weekends were spent by the pool and in the sun after I got my cleaning done. (and sometimes before the cleaning was done!) Until one June when thermometer hit 123 degrees, oh my goodness is that hot. It took your breath away. It was like opening your front door to an oven. The high heat that year went on for almost two weeks straight in the 115 degrees plus range. The summers became unbearable and they seemed to never end.... I kept telling my self that it was no worse than winter in the midwest. And it probably isn't but it became too much for me. Eventually I stuck to the shade of my covered patio.

My Friend Ivy and I at her sister Rocky's house in Texas in August of 1985

Ivy and I at Lake Pleasant in November 1985

I do not actively try to get sun any more. I haven't in many years but I do enjoy gardening which I do obviously during the day in the sun. I still love the warmth of the sun as it warms me to my bones. Since I am back in the midwest, the summers are too short and the winters too long...except this year but I enjoy all the seasons. My favorite day is an Indian summer day in October in the Midwest.

Jan

Week 26 of 2012  Favorite Dessert

Who said, "Life is unpredictable....eat dessert first"?  My mom never did.  Her line was "clean your plate if you want dessert."  Dessert was not an everyday event, but all the Smith's can attest to not missing too many sweet treats.  If it was a holiday, birthday or company coming, there was dessert.  All four of the Smith girls are good cooks..and it all began with learning to make cookies, cakes and other goodies.  I don't remember asking how to make meat, potatoes or veggies...at least not initially.

Mom was a great cook and did a super job with most everything she made.  Over the years, she was known for her apple pie, angelfood cake with strawberries and almond star Christmas cookies.  I remember loving her elderberry pie, something that was an involved process.  Grandpa Anderson (mom's dad) would come and we would go pick the berries by the roadside.  (Funny we never worried about road spray in those days)  Elderberries are very tiny black berries in a clump.  You would pick the stems, take them home in a brown paper grocery bag and rub them between your fingers to loose them from the stem, repeating the process until you had 5-6 cups to make the pie...a lot of work...but fabulous results.  Add a scoop of vanilla ice cream...yum!  One of my favorites...

My husband's Grandma...Grandma Vanoff was a terrific cook and owned Peerless Cafe, home of Vanoff's Pan Fried Chicken!  She made and now I make the very best Chocolate Frosting in the world.  She also made me a very scrumptious birthday cake every year...white layers with lemon filling and vanilla frosting.  My mom always made me angelfood with strawberries...for 57 straight years.  It was neat to have another favorite for my birthday cake!

One of my best girlfriends makes the worlds best Chocolate Chip Cookies.  I've had lessons...right in my own kitchen, I have the recipe and all the ingredients, but they do not turn out like Jeannie's do.  Many in my family and beyond would easily say Jeannie's Chocolate Chip Cookies are the hands down favorite!

So is it a Saunder's Hot Fudge Cream Puff that Mom and Dee would splurge on in downtown Detroit, a Turtle Sundae at the Dairy Isle in Harbor Beach, or how about Old Fashioned Rice Pudding at Cracker Barrel or Old Fashioned Sugar Cookies at Reuter's Bakery (the Semp boys favorite)....there's not much to "not like" about dessert.  Well, there's one that I don't want to repeat courtesy of my sister Sharon and her husband Michael for my 60th birthday.

Check out the photo...it wasn't a good one!  I always notice powdered sugar on dessert tops now...and never blow out the candles on those!

Week 27 of 2012 – Independence Day

Independence Day, the 4^th of July was all about time spent with family. We almost always had a picnic in our back yard and sometimes a croquet match in the side yard. Holidays were busy for my Dad. He would get up early and drive to Detroit to retrieve his parents for the day. They lived in a retirement home for Methodist ministers called West Grand Boulevard.

 

Holidays were an escape for Grandma and Grandpa Smith, an escape from the ordinary, the routine,  from the retirement home and the "city". Grandpa had MS and was confined to a wheel chair.  He lived on one of  the nursing room floors(3^rd floor) and Grandma had her own apartment on the 5^th floor. (I think) My Dad would drive the van down to the city and hoped for a good parking spot so he could load Grandpa and Grandma in the van for a day trip to Romeo.  These were in the days long before handicapped parking and lift gates on vans.  Sometimes we would need to circle the block a few times waiting for a parking spot to open up. Dad could usually find a retirement home employee or two who could help him get Grandpa loaded. Sometime he took an adult friend with him just in case.

They would usually arrive by mid-morning about the time Mom finished making the potato salad!  We would have usual summer food;  potato salad, deviled eggs, chicken, hamburgers or hotdogs and water melon!  Sometimes my mother's Dad, Grandpa Anderson would come too.

Dad had built a barbeque pit / fireplace out of used brick which he got free from an old building torn down in Romeo or Rochester.  I cannot remember where it was.  I remember the pile in the side yard and I remember him working at stripping the old mortar of the bricks before he neatly piled the bricks along the lot line. I believe it was the brick which was used for the fireplace when the family room was added on.  The outdoor fireplace was where we roasted hotdogs and anything else we cooked out doors.  He also made a side table which we put the serving dishes on and a bench. Here is a pretty good picture of it taken in 1964 or 1965 but I see a photo of it with snow over it in early 1963 photo.   This photo is of a picnic with the Randall family. Wonder if it is still there all these years later.

Our day would be spent in the back yard around a picnic table eating.  In the summer when we had water melon we were allowed to spit the seeds out in the yard! We would see who could spit the seeds the furthest and Grandpa Smith would be coaxing us on.

In the evening, Dad would get the help of the some of the men in our neighborhood and load Grandpa  and Grandma back into the van for a return trip back to Detroit. Due to his MS, there was no way for him to spent the night away from the retirement home. It was usually after dark when he returned home and we would be waiting impatiently for him.

 We could finally light our sparklers when he got home.  When I was 8 years old, I had an accident with a sparkler which could have been life changing.  I had been told over and over again not to run when we were playing with sparkler but the excited 8 year old that I was, forgot!  I ran over to my sister Pam to get my sparkler lite off of her sparkler, just as she moved her sparkler and I walked right into it, face first.  I received a good burn down the left side of my face and really near my eye.  Part of the scar remains today. The Dr said that it was a fraction of an inch away from my eye which would have likely meant the lose of  vision in my left eye. I still am not very fond of sparklers today.

So there you have it.  Independence Day...the 4th of July, through the eyes of a kid...

So until the next shared memory...

Jan

Week 26 of 2012 - Favorite Dessert

I have a sweet tooth but I did not always have it.  It seems to have gotten worse with age. Today, I love ice cream and anything chocolate but especially dark chocolate. I returned from vacation and looked up the topic for last week when I was gone.  Favorite Dessert, I thought and it left me thinking for a good long time.  A favorite dessert, well isn't that strange.  You would think that I would have one from my childhood but I don't.  Mom used to make cookies, cakes, pies...all sorts of things especially for “Special Occasions”, birthdays and holidays but none really sticks out in my mind.

She always made a cake for your birthday.  Here I am for my first birthday with a bright pink cake.  I wonder how much red food coloring it took to get it that pink? And here are a few more of my birthdays...

Notice the help I am getting with blowing out the candles.  It happened every year!

I think this must have been Pam's birthday.  There are too many candle on the cake for my birthday.  Look, even Mom got in the act for this birthday.  We all helped for everyone's birthday. I am not sure how or when that started but as I look at the old photos it happened in all of the pictures...Sometimes all 7 of us are doing it. Of course, Dad is taking the picture and for all  I know maybe he is trying to help from behind the camera.!! So for Birthdays we had cake for sure!

 I do not think that I really asked for a specific cake until I was older..and by then a new flavor was introduced in the boxed cake selections; it was German Chocolate with coconut frosting and that became my favorite.

  As a child, I was pretty fond of ice cream. I remember we had a milk delivery service called Twin Pines and the Twin Pines man had ice cream which he sold by the box on his truck in the summer.  We would work for the farm on 29 Mile picking produce and made a little spending money.  I would buy a box of ice cream bars or ice cream sandwiches.  "Ok, but you have to share them," Mom always said when I asked her if I could buy some.  I couldn’t eat the whole box!  Usually by the time the box got passed around there was maybe one left for me for later.

Ok, so there you have it!  It must be cake and ice cream.

Until the next memory ...

Jan