Summertime…

Happy Summer to You!

We have sunshine, woohoo!

 

 

This is from the 50’s at Big Bear in the San Bernardino Mountains,  Southern California. The three families represented here are all Russian immigrants who arrived in the U.S.A. in the late 40’s.  I’m the one with the buster brown haircut sitting on the table. At this point I was the youngest in our family. Our next 4 siblings were born in 1958, 1959 and twins in 1963.

To celebrate the first day of summer I’ll be out in the yard mowing and pulling weeds…not camping.

What are you doing?

Photobucket replaced all my photos with blurred out versions 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.

Memorial Day Tribute ~ Home on the Range ~ Dickenson

Memorial Day Greetings to you.  God bless our Troops and Veterans!

For Memorial Day weekend I’m posting this quote from Home On the Range ~ A Century On The High Plains by James R. Dickenson.

Home on the Range chronicles the epic drama of the settling and development of the High Plains, as viewed through the saga of journalist James Dickenson’s family and the wheat-farming community of McDonald, Kansas.

He speaks of Dear’s mother, my MIL Verna who’s father and brothers served in civilian and military duties in World War II. Verna was a school teacher in a one room schoolhouse in Kansas before she married Rex (Dear’s father), who also served in World War II.

“The father of my fifth-grade teacher, Verna Moline, a pretty young woman whom I adored, was a civilian construction worker on Midway Island at the time. His family obviously had many anxious moments about him until the naval battle of Midway, a turning point in the war in the Pacific, ended the threat that Midway would suffer Wake Island’s fate of invasion and occupation by the Japanese. He returned safely shortly thereafter. On days when the news was particularly dire, we kids would crowd around her desk before class to ask anxiously about him and voice our sympathies – probably seeking reassurance ourselves in those dark early days of defeat at the hands of the Japanese. However, as my mother, who was teaching English in the high school at the time, finally pointed out, our constant solicitude was something Miss Moline probably could have done without, although she was too gracious to show it.”

Remember our troops and pray. If you know someone who served our country give them a hug and a thank you. Blessings on this Memorial Day Weekend!

http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/dichom.html

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.

Happy Birthday to My Mom!

We’re both a lot older now! My mom turns 86 today and my dad will be 87 in May. My mother is truly the Proverbs 31 woman. She has always put her children and husband as a top priority in her life. Her first child died at 2 years old and she has raised 8 others sewing clothes for the girls and making 3 meals a day most of our lives except for Sunday mornings. On Sunday mornings because we’d all be in a hurry to get ready for church she’d get a break and we’d have store bought coffee cake for breakfast. Usually it was a frozen Sara Lee variety. Of course there would be preparations under way already for Sunday lunch. Usually we’d bring someone extra home for that lunch, too. Once in the while in the middle of the week my father would pick up a pizza from Johnny’s and we’d even get soda to have with it. (Did I get that right siblings? Was it Johnny’s pizza?)

So today I am thanking our God Almighty for giving us a mother who loves us, sacrifices for us, and loves her husband. It’s a wonderful heritage and we have benefited in many ways from it.

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I stored on their site from 2007-2015 hostage replacing them with ugly grey and black boxes and asking for a large ransom to retrieve them. It is a slow process to go through all my posts deleting the ugly boxes.

See What He Will Do…

 

About two years ago the Billy Graham Association was asking for email stories of how Billy Graham’s Evangelical Outreach had touched our lives. I sent in the story of my Pop’s conversion. Previously to this request, when our daughter was at Wheaton College in Illinois we were able to visit the Billy Graham Museum on campus. Emotions came to the surface when I saw the photos from the Los Angeles Crusade at the Coliseum in 1963. I knew my dad and I were somewhere in that photo of the stadium filled to overflowing.

 

I sent in my story hoping that Billy would hear and know that I thanked God for his devotion to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and how it impacted my family.

 

What a thrill to get this book in the mail this past month, skimming through and seeing my story about Pop published.

 

 

I can hardly wait to show my Mom and Pop the book…

My parents are soon turning 86 and 85.

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I stored on their site from 2007-2015 hostage replacing them with ugly grey and black boxes and asking for a large ransom to retrieve them. It is a slow process to go through all my posts deleting the ugly boxes.

Blue Monday ~ Aunt Anna’s Stuff…

Last Thursday I popped in to see my mother and father. They live in a Senior Apartment complex and my Aunt Anna decided to move in a few doors down from them. Aunt Anna is my father’s only living sibling. When I was there Aunt Anna wanted me to come over and see some things she wanted to give away. Her granddaughters had no interest in these goodies. I gladly took a few things off her hands and let her know they would be used and appreciated.

 

This is a Blue Danube tablecloth with 12 napkins to match. I recognized the pattern right away since I have a few Blue Danube pieces including the teapot pictured.

 

She had a few things that my paternal grandmother had made and I was happy to nab this. I was also happy she had this photo of my grandparents to give me.

 

These were all from my Aunt, too. She made the apron. I really enjoy the old fashioned cut glass pitcher and glasses to match.

It’s always fun for a Thrift Store Junkie to shop for free!

Thank you to Smiling Sally for hosting Blue Monday. Please click over to join in the Blue Monday Fun!

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I stored on their site from 2007-2015 hostage replacing them with ugly grey and black boxes and asking for a large ransom to retrieve them. It is a slow process to go through all my posts deleting the ugly boxes.

Married Molokan Women

 

This is a photo taken in Mexico sometime in the late 40’s I think. A Molokan Community was established in Baja California years ago. This shows the typical Molokan outfit that married Molokan women wear to Church functions then and now. The head coverings are called a Kasinka. If you visited a Molokan church today you’d see this exact look that the women are sporting here. I think it’s a wonderful photo and wanted to add it to my Molokan Posts. My other posts besides my Russian Recipes can be found here and here. If anyone out there knows who these ladies are just leave a comment and let me know. Most of my immediate family left the Molokan church in the 60’s. I left well before I’d have to wear this outfit and I never intended to marry a Molokan so I never was in the position to have to wear it…

Photobucket is holding all my photos from 2007-2015 hostage and demanding a ransom for me to access them. I’m slowly cleaning up many of my posts where PB have added ugly black and grey boxes where my photos used to be. So frustrating!

Thank You for Praying for my Dad!

He would do the same for you!

Thanks so much for all your prayers for my dad, Moisi. He came through his surgery well and will be coming home Tuesday morning. Several of us “kids” were at the hospital all day hanging out together. We got to pray over him before he went into surgery. He’ll be in a lot of pain for a while but when everything heals up he should have some good relief from some heartburn issues that have been bothering him for a long time. I really appreciate my blogging community that responds to the needs of our cyberspace community! Blessings on all of you…

Photobucket is holding my photos hostage from 2007-2015 and replacing them with an ugly black and grey squares demanding money to release them, so frustrating.

Cousins in Seattle

 

Two of our 3 nieces on Dear’s side of the family travelled to Seattle from New York and Los Angeles last weekend for a cousin reunion. Our third niece Kacie is still in highschool and didn’t make the trip. The great thing about this reunion is that it was all initiated on the cousins’ part not the Aunts’ and Uncles’. The Aunts and Uncles were in Southern California and all the cousins but one were in Seattle. What a blessing for our family that we all love each other.

Top left photo our son Dan, niece Annie, niece Jenna, our son Josh. Top right in the back our DIL Laura, Jenna, Dan, Annie and Josh. Our daughter Katie with her boyfriend Ben. Bottom Dan, Annie, Jenna. Bottom right our son Josh and Dil Laura. Is it just me or do these cousins resemble eachother?

Bear with me as I experiment with these collages. I stole all these photos from my DIL Laura and just love seeing my kids and nieces so it’s been fun creating these with their faces that I don’t see as often as I would like to…

 

Hey Josh! Look what I saw at Trader Joe’s today. If you were a wine lover I would have bought you a case!

Photobucket is holding my photos hostage from 2007-2015 and replacing them with an ugly black and grey squares demanding money to release them, so frustrating.

Michelle’s Birthday Party

My niece Michelle turned 30 this year and a celebration was in order so family and friends headed to Orange, California to Debbee’s townhome for a party. There was lots of great food including everyone’s favorite Piroshky. We had meat filled piroshky, potato filled piroshky and a cabbage filled pirog.

Here are some of the usual suspects.

The Parentals/Grandparents ~ Nadia and Moisi

Some of Michelle’s aunts and her mommy

Michelle and her auntie ellen b.

Michelle and her son Jackson

Nana and Jackson

Jackson making a serious point!

This photo turned out so tiny in the collage I wanted to add it here since it’s the only shot of Ryan I managed to get and I wanted M. Lou to see her son. So here’s Michelle and Ryan (Jackson’s Dad)  with cousins David and Kristin. I also realized that this is the only photo I took that has Michelle’s sister Melissa in it. There she is way back there behind Michelle.

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!

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!