Happy 65th Wedding Anniversary Mom and Pop!

From The Old-Time Family

We were eight around the table in those happy days back then.
Eight that cleaned our plates of pot-pie [blintzes] and then passed them up again;
Eight that needed shoes and stockings, eight to wash and put to bed,
And with mighty little money in the purse, as I have said,
But with all the care we brought them, and through all the days of stress,
I never heard my father or my mother wish for less.

~ Edgar A. Guest

These are the 8 Bagdanov siblings from oldest to youngest. Kathy, Vera, Fred, Ellen, Tim, Steve, Lana and Leonard

Now here’s a funny discovery we found out from my father this past weekend. It seems all these years they’ve been celebrating the wrong day as their anniversary. My parents were both from a peasant background. They both with their families escaped out of Russia into Iran in their pre-teens. They did not have great record keeping. There are no birth certificates or wedding licenses for them. They chose a birthday when they entered the U.S.A. They knew they were both born in the Spring. They chose September 13th as a wedding date because they thought they remembered that their wedding coincided with a Jewish holiday in September. Come to find out from a date they found on the baby picture of their first daughter who died at the age of 2 that they could not have been married in September but it was probably July just after harvest in Iran. Most of their friends got married this time of year after all the work was completed. Our first sister Kathy was born in April so they know they were married well before September 13th! Yes, strange but true, after they lost their first Kathy they named their second daughter Kathy, too.

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I posted on my blog from 2007-2015 hostage and replaced them with big black and grey boxes with threats. So discouraging…as I’m slowly trying to clean up thousands of posts!

Pink Saturday ~ Depression Glass

Welcome to Pink Saturday

 

All this Pink Depression Glass is from Dear’s Great, Great, Aunt Emma. It sat in a trunk for years and Dear’s mother never chose to empty the trunk and use anything in it. After Dear’s mother passed away I decided to pull it all out and use it. It’s goes well with my Royal Albert Moss Rose Pattern.

Thank you so much for visiting my Pink today. For more Pink Saturday Posts visit Beverly at her blog How Sweet the Sound.

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I posted on my blog from 2007-2015 hostage and replaced them with big black and grey boxes with threats. So discouraging…as I’m slowly trying to clean up thousands of posts!

Photo Hunters ~ Wild

Some Wild views from my walks

I think these are Mule Deer. This is from Willow’s neighborhood, my bloggy walking buddy.

Looking through a space in a wooden fence at a field near my home that is still in it’s wild state.

 

The Sea, the tide, the shore, the Sea birds, all untamed and wild.

For more Photo Hunters visit tnchick. If you want to see Wild early click over to Carver’s.

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I posted on my blog from 2007-2015 hostage and replaced them with big black and grey boxes with threats. So discouraging…as I’m slowly trying to clean up thousands of posts!

Show Me Something Relaxing…

Robert from Thoughts of a Father has a photo challenge this week with something different every day. Today the challenge is to show something that relaxes you. This is my first contribution and I thought that this represents some relaxation waiting to happen…

For more relaxation posts visit Robert.

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I posted on my blog from 2007-2015 hostage and replaced them with big black and grey boxes with threats. So discouraging…as I’m slowly trying to clean up thousands of posts!

Fave Five for Friday

 

It’s time for Fave Five for Friday. If you want to play along visit Susanne at Living to tell the Story. Here are my favorites since last Friday.

1. Starting with Saturday I have two favorites. The first was a return to the beach with Dear for our early morning Saturday walks at Emma Wood State Beach in Ventura, California. We were there at 6:30 A.M. and we saw a lot of birds…

 

2. After our walk we got ready to drive south for a family get-together to visit with my brother Leonard, his wife Mandy and their new daughter Hope. She’s 7 months old and they all live in Dallas so it’s a wonderful event when they come to Southern California for all of us to get our fix!

 

3. This made me laugh out loud on Monday when I listened to this You-Tube on Mighty Mom’s site. Click here and give a listen. It’s only about 23 seconds long…

No – I don’t think it’s for real but it still is so darn funny!!

4. Dear turned 55 on Tuesday and a highlight of the week was celebrating Him and celebrating with him at a nice Steak house close to us.

 

5. Today I’m headed to a planning meeting for our new year of Women’s Bible Study. This year I’ll be a table leader so I’m looking forward to the discipline and the friendships that I’ll form with the ladies at my table. We’re studying Grace.

For more Fave Five head over to Susanne’s and consider joining in. Blessings…

September 11, 2001 ~ I’ll Never Forget

I will never forget this day. Where I was, what I did, who I talked to. My TV was still in my living room in Washington in 2001. I sat on the edge of an ottoman in shock. I started dialing, first my husband, then my married son and his wife, (they were married 2 weeks before 9/11 so they just celebrated their 7th anniversary this year, too)  I woke my 2 kids that were still at home. That day seemed like it would never end. Called my SIL to find out if she’d heard anything from my niece who works in Manhattan. My niece was in route to Manhattan, no one at work had seen her yet. She wasn’t a casualty that day. She made it. She had to turn around and try to get home again. It took her over 6 hours to get home. Small price to pay compared to so many…

Praying that God will continue to lead and direct our leaders in how best to protect the people they are called to serve. Praying that God will protect us from evil. Also praying that God will build us up to be able to persevere and endure whatever suffering comes our way.

I’m headed out to my porch now to put out the only little symbol of our flag I have here in Southern California. My big flags are all in Washington State.  I’ll add a photo soon.

 

Psalm 20:7 ~ “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.”

So for my morning walk I was on a quest to find U.S. Flags displayed today. I have a hard time walking past 30 minutes by myself and challenging myself with quests helps me stay out longer. At first I was sad that I wasn’t finding any flags but as I plugged away I finally found some. Here’s a collage of some of the flags displayed on my neighborhood 7208 step walk.

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I posted on my blog from 2007-2015 hostage and replaced them with big black and grey boxes with threats. So discouraging…as I’m slowly trying to clean up thousands of posts!

Sky Watch #9

 

 

My Sky Watch photos this week are all from a morning walk in my neighborhood in Southern California. The mountain you see is in the north western end of the Santa Monica Mountains.

 

 

For more Sky Watch Photos from around the world click here.

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I posted on my blog from 2007-2015 hostage and replaced them with big black and grey boxes with threats. So discouraging…as I’m slowly trying to clean up thousands of posts!

Magic Bars ~

We were having a family get together on Saturday and I decided to try this recipe for Magic Bars that I saw on Trish’s blog and that she posted on the MGCC blog (Mennonite Girls Can Cook). I blew it right off the top cuz I only bought one package of Fig Newtons and 42 Fig Newtons means you need 2 packages! Hey did y’all know that Oreos come in a Golden Variety??

Magic Bars with a twist by ellen b.

45 Newton cookies/ Strawberry or Raspberry/ Trish and I used Fig (you’ll need 2 packages)
1 (14oz.) can of sweetened condensed milk
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup pecan pieces (walnuts would work, too)
8 Golden Oreos or regular ones if you can’t find the Golden broken up into pieces
1/4 cup shredded coconut (Lana and Steve B. you can omit the coconut!)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9×13 pan with parchment paper. Lay Newtons side by side in pan to fill bottom. (Here’s where I went wrong so I improvised and used the Golden Oreo’s to fill the rest of the pan. Yikes I hope they turn out ok… Pour condensed milk over the top of this layer.

Yep one package left me a little short…

Sorry to say as creative as this improvise was it did not work!!

Stir together chocolate chips, nuts, broken up pieces of Oreos, and coconut. Sprinkle over the Newtons and condensed milk.

 

Bake for 22-25 minutes. Let cool and then chill for a while. Cut into 24 bars.

The finished product out of the oven. The Fig Newton side cut well into squares but here’s the improvised side…

Thankfully there were enough bars to share from the Newton side…

 

These were easy and good when you follow the recipe and buy enough Fig Newtons. The Fig flavor was well received but I’m thinking I’ll try Raspberry next time. Enjoy…

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I posted on my blog from 2007-2015 hostage and replaced them with big black and grey boxes with threats. So discouraging…as I’m slowly trying to clean up thousands of posts!