#37 In the Present…

We decided to have our 37th Anniversary dinner at Duck’s Grille and Bar in Jacksonville, North Carolina.

Katie joined us because our time together is short.

We really enjoy the food here at Duck’s. For appetizers we had Ahi Tuna and Carolina Crab Cake. Both were very good. Dear and I had the Rack of Lamb and Katie ordered angel hair pesto for our main courses. We were all very happy with our choices.

After a couple drinks all you have to do is look around to remember you are at Duck’s. :0) I hope by now you all understand my sense of humor!

Oh my! We even split a lovely Chocolate Souffle 3 ways and it was superb!

We are so excited to get home after dinner because Katie and Andrew’s couch and loveseat were finally delivered this afternoon and we have a comfortable place to relax for the rest of the evening.

Thank you for all your beautiful anniversary wishes. We really do appreciate them.

37 Years Today…

37 Years Ago…

Today is Dear and my 37th wedding anniversary. We will be going out to dinner tonight to celebrate in Jacksonville, North Carolina. That will be a first for us. Most of our anniversary dinners have been in Southern California and Washington. Early in our marriage we always went to the Chart House at different locations in Southern California. Our anniversary falls during conference time for Dear so a couple of our dinners have been where the conferences have been, Morgan’s Steakhouse in Las Vegas and Pescatore in San Francisco. God has been good to Dear and me all these years. We are grateful to Him for his love and mercy on our lives together.

Ten Years!

August 25, 2001 was their wedding day!

Our son Josh and his lovely bride Laura!

What a fun celebration it was 10 years ago. I said it 10 years ago and every year since “God blessed us all when he brought these two together!”

They are a blessing to each other, to their parents, to their siblings, to their cousins, to their aunts and uncles, to their co-workers, to their friends, and to their neighbors.

May God continue to bless them richly in all the years to come. Thank you Lord for this special union!!

Something Borrowed, Something Blue Monday…

Monday December 6th is Dear and my 36th wedding anniversary.

Here we are all decked out in blue at our Russian Baptist Church Shower in 1974.

This is my maternal grandmother, my babushka, at our shower wearing blue, too. She really was a wonderful lady who was a prayer warrior. She was widowed while in Iran and immigrated a few years later then my parents to the USA. She lost her hand and part of her arm when she was a young girl and never let her handicap stand in the way. She raised 3 children, embroidered beautifully, and was a wonderful cook, better then most people with two hands.

This is my maternal grandmother, my mother, and me at Laguna Beach, California in the early 70’s.

Through all the ups and downs of marriage, finances and child rearing I am very thankful for the commitment and love Dear and I have shared. I count myself blessed to have married a man with integrity and faithfulness to me , his family and his God.

Thank you Dear! Here’s to many more years together!

To see more Blue Monday posts please visit Sally at Smiling Sally!

Photobucket replaced all my photos with ugly black and grey boxes and they are holding my photos hostage until I pay them lots of money. I’m slowly going through all my posts and trying to clean them up and replacing some photos. Such a bother.

Together for 67 Years!

Today is my mom and pop’s wedding anniversary. They are 87 years old. They were married in Tehran, Iran in 1943. Back then they called it Persia. They immigrated to the U.S.A. in 1947. They had 9 children but lost their first daughter to an illness when she was just two. She is buried in Iran.

We count ourselves blessed by God to have parents who are faithful to each other and to their children and friends. They love each other dearly and do everything together. Thank you to my mom and pop for being such a wonderful example to us!

Happy 66th Anniversary Mom and Pop!

Tomorrow is my parent’s 66th Wedding Anniversary. We are gathering today for a dinner celebration. Our family is so fortunate and blessed to have both our parents still living and still enjoying married life together. We thank God for them and for the heritage God has given us because of their love for God and their love for each other.

Our 34th Wedding Anniversary in San Francisco

I arrived in San Francisco from Seattle on Saturday and met up with Dear at Foley’s Irish Pub for a snack and a Guinness before we headed out on a walking tour of Market Street, the Ferry Building, Embarcadero and on to Scoma’s for dinner at Fisherman’s Wharf.

The food was really wonderful at Scoma’s. Dear had the Lazy Man’s Cioppino (with the crabmeat out of the shell) and I had the Broiled Swordfish con Fagioli (broiled with White Beans, Swiss Chard and Pancetta) It was served with mashed pototoes. I want to give a shout out of thanks to Michelle and Pam for recommending this great restaurant. Our good friends the Romero’s also recommended it. So 3 families in 3 different parts of the U.S.A. all gave us the same recommendation. We knew it would be great. Bloggy friends are great resources!!

I have to wait to get back to my condo and good internet service to upload any more of my San Francisco Photos. This hotel connection is very painfully slow. I mean really slow!! I have a couple preposts ready to go for Monday and Tuesday thank goodness…

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!

TT #25 ~ 13 Big Years in my 57!

Friday March 14th is my 57th Birthday. For my TT this week I’m choosing 13 very memorable years in my 57!

1. 1951 ~ My birth year. I was born in East Los Angeles, California.

2. 1963 ~ At Hume Lake Christian Camps in King’s Canyon, California God called me to become a disciple of Jesus Christ and I started a new life following him.

3. 1968 ~ Graduated from Montebello High School in Montebello, California

4. 1972 ~ Went on my first date with Dear in October of this year.

5. 1973 ~ Graduated from Cal-State Los Angeles with a degree in Home Economics and an Elementary Teaching Certificate.

6. 1974 ~ Got married on December 6th to Dear and have celebrated 33 years of marriage so far. We were married on a Friday evening.

7. 1979 ~ Our first child was born in January. Josh is our firstborn weighing in at 10 pounds. Born on a Friday.

8. 1981 ~ Our second son was born also in January, also on a Friday. Dan was 8 pounds and 1-1/2 oz.

9. 1985 ~ Our third child was born on a Friday, too but not in January. Our first daughter (and last) Katie was born at the end of December even though her due date was in January also. She weighed in at 8 pounds and 12 oz.

10. 1988 ~ We moved from California to the state of Washington so Dear could go to Pharmacy School at the University of Washington.

11. 1996 ~ We gave our dream home and all of our equity back to the bank because of a major landslide on the slope behind our home.

12. 2001 ~ Our first born son was married to our beautiful daughter in law, Laura.

13. 2006 ~ Dear took a full-time job in Southern California and he and I find ourselves living in Southern California again but without our children close by. They are all still in Washington. Dan and Katie are taking care of our home while we’re in Southern California in our Condo.

I’ll leave you with this party image of me way back in the 50’s. I’ve always been one to love a good time…

For more TT click here.

Photobucket is holding all my photos from 2007-2015 hostage. I’m working on updating my blog posts very slowly.

My Blog is One Year Old March 3rd!

Update: The name drawn to receive the Butterfly necklace is Rosemary from Seasonings of the Heart! I’ll contact you. Thanks to everyone for your kind words and visiting my party!

Happy Birthday Happy Wonderer!

So I contemplated how we should celebrate the anniversary of that day.

Should I serve one of my Russian favorites that my mom bakes, Roolyet? Make sure you roll your tongue on the roo part of the word.

Or maybe I could serve this dessert I’ve made that is so simple and I’ll include the directions below.

But in the great Hobbit Birthday Tradition I decided I would give away a gift to celebrate. The winning of this gift is open to all my regular bloggy friends and bloggers who participate in the same weekly memes I do. All you have to do is to leave a comment and make sure you include a good email address so I can contact you if you win. If you’re a guy I’m sorry that this is so feminine but if you win maybe you could give it to your wife, mother, sister, or friend.

I thought this was appropriate for the hope of Spring and new life it brings.

So thanks for stopping by my party and take time to comment and enter the drawing. It’s been a fun year for me getting to know all about blogging. I appreciate the friendships I’ve developed and am grateful for y’all.

Blessings..
ellen b.

Easy directions for individual trifle like desserts…

Cook one larger package of Vanilla pudding (not instant) according to package directions then put plastic wrap right on the surface of the pudding and let it cool in the refrigerator. While the pudding is cooling wash and cut 1 large carton of fresh strawberries into bite size pieces. Put them into a bowl and sprinkle sugar on top of them to make them juicier and sweeter. After the pudding has gotten cold whip up 2 cups heavy whipping cream (I add 1/4 -1/2 tsp. pure almond extract to the cream). Save some of the whipping cream to top the desserts and fold in the rest of the whipped cream into the cold pudding. Now all you have to do is assemble the individual trifles. Put some of the strawberries in the bottom of a fun glass or glass bowl, then add some store bought pound cake torn into pieces or angel food cake torn into pieces, next put some of the pudding mixture then keep layering in this same order. Top with a dollop of whip cream and a strawberry. Simple and refreshing and yummy. (You could also make the layers in a Large Trifle bowl)