Family Photo Friday: Dear Old Dad

Has it been two weeks? Oops. Life has really gotten in the way -- Henry is officially difficult (no longer sleeping through the night, no longer napping, getting teeth...), Ruby has been sick, school's starting in a week, I have a work assignment I have to do, the second season of Dexter is out on DVD... I swear there will be a post-Labour Day blogging extravaganza. Really.

Anyway, yesterday my strange but lovable father turned 65. He is officially a senior citizen, no longer in the age of majority. He's had his share of health problems over the years, so we're all glad that he made it to his golden years in relatively good health. Above is a picture of Dad when he was nine months old. He wouldn't like me saying this, but this picture pretty much looks like someone photoshopped his current head onto the body of a very sturdy baby. Happy birthday, big guy.

Is it gross that I'm letting Henry keep himself occupied right now by chewing on my bedroom slipper. And he just vomited on it. Great.

Family Photo Friday: Happy Birthday, Grandma!

Ruby in Edmonton.
Originally uploaded by elizaboothy

Today is my Grandma Ruby's 85th Birthday. This is a picture of her walking down the street in 1948, putting her at 25 years old (I think she'd already had three kids at this point!). I love how she looks so oblivious to the camera in this photo -- it looks like something out of a newspaper. It must have been taken by someone she knew (I'm guessing my grandfather), but it seems so detached.

Anyway, I love this photo and I love my Grandma. Happy Birthday!

Family Photo Friday: The Apple And The Tree

Seven weeks. We're seven weeks into being a family of four. With Ruby, the first three months of her life felt like an eternity, but with Henry it feels like we just brought him home. He's growing like crazy (three inches taller now than when he was born) and he's sweet and hungry and grunty and smiley and cooing and beautiful. And he looks like his dad.

Above is a picture of Aaron with his mum (hope you don't mind Leena, but this photo is so beautiful that I had to post it) when he was seven weeks old. Now, here's a picture of Henry, also at seven weeks:


Now, these photos don't really do their likeness justice -- I could have found others that were dead ringers, but for now you get the point. Two beautiful boys. And I love them both.

Family Photo Friday: Happy V-Day

Happy belated Valentine's Day (or as my dear friend Kitty always calls it, V-D Day), if you're into that kind of thing. So far in these family photo things I've been mostly talking about my mom's family. This isn't a prejudice, it's just that I don't know quite as much about my dad's fam. My dad has never talked a whole lot about his family; he only has one brother who I don't see a whole lot; his dad passed away some years ago and was never very chatty about such things; and his mom, my Grandma Vi tends to... well, we'll call it exaggerating. I can't really fault her, as, ahem, creative embellishment is a trait shared by both my father and myself as well, but it's really hard to believe much that she says. And as she gets older her memory gets more creative. So take the following story with a grain of salt.

The above photo is the portrait taken at Grandma Vi and Grandpa George's wedding in about 1941 or so. I don't know many details about their wedding -- although they claim they had to run away to get hitched because neither's parents approved of their engagement. But, here's the story of how they (and I do stress, allegedly) met. My grandfather worked as a refrigeration repair technician and my grandmother worked as a receptionist at some company that he had to call often. They came to recognize each other's voices and took to flirting on the phone. Vi claims that his voice was rather sexy.

So, one night, Vi was out bowling with some girlfriends. Apparently, my clumsy ways were also inherited from her and as she lobbed the ball down the alley her feet fell out from under her and she went sliding to the ground. A gentleman from the next lane walked over and said "Can I help you up?" She immediately looked up at him, recognized that sexy voice and said "George?" To which he replied, "Vi?" And they lived happily ever after.

Up until the time of his death, George liked to say "Yup, I picked her up out of the gutter." He meant it to be charming and she always thought it was.


In other news, Aaron really pulled one out of the hat for our Valentines Day. Much to my horror, he's been out of town for work a lot lately (I'll remind you I'm eight months pregnant!) and he came home from New York yesterday with cupcakes from Magnolia. I know people who live in NYC are totally over Magnolia, but in these parts they're quite an exotic treat from my sweet.

Family Photo Friday: Happy Birthday Mom

Tuesday marks my mom's birthday. I'm not going to tell you how old she is, but she's quite young to be mother to three kids in their thirties (actually, my youngest brother is 29, but close enough). Let's just say she has a few years to go before she hits 60. She's always looked pretty young too -- or maybe we just choose not to see our own mother's signs of aging... I'm not sure.

Anyway, this is a picture of mom with her father, my Grandpa Ed, the night of her wedding. It was a really casual affair -- my dad (who I think she'd been dating for about a year or so) was called to work overseas and his company would arrange to also move out his wife, but not his girlfriend. So, with very little notice, they arranged to get married at a downtown church. I always loved looking at the pictures from the reception, where my mom changed out of her wedding dress (which was a very polyester '70s affair with a mock turtleneck collar) into this outfit, which kind of looks like a glammed-up nurses outfit or a kickier version of what supermarket clerks wore in the '70s. I really love this outfit -- I wish she'd have kept it. Anyway, she looks so young and happy and really, not much different than she looks today. Happy birtday mom. You're a good one.

Family Photo Friday: Happy Birthday Ruby

Despite the growing popularity of the name Ruby, I didn't choose it for my little gal because it's now and hip, or because it appears in so many songs (though, with the exception of that Kaiser Chiefs song, most Ruby songs are way too sad to name a kid after -- though I will note, she was born on a Tuesday). I named my daughter after my grandmother, who I always thought had a beautiful name to match her beautiful self. I'm sure I'll talk much more about Grandma Ruby in these Family Photo Fridays (she's still alive and well, so she's a fountain of stories), but I thought this picture was particularly appropriate for my little Ruby's third birthday.

A funny thing about Grandma Ruby's name: when she was born in 1923, her parents Fred and Lydia had a hot debate over what to name their little daughter. Lydia liked the name Ruby (which was very popular at the time) and Fred wanted to name her Frieda, after himself. It's puzzling to me why he would be so stuck on Frieda, since Ruby did have an older brother named Ted -- I guess Fred didn't win the name battle with him either. Anyway, Lydia was apparently not the kind of woman you wanted to mess with, so Fred agreed to name the baby Ruby. He went off and registered the name (you can see where this is going).

So, about 40 years later, the now grown Ruby went to the local records office to get a copy of her birth certificate because she needed to apply for a passport or something. After searching through the records (this was in the pre-computer days), the guy at the office regretted to tell her that he didn't have a certificate for a Ruby Frieda, but he did have a Frieda Ruby with the same parents and birthday as hers. That rascal Fred went behind his wife's back and named the kid Frieda anyway, with no one the wiser. Fred was gone before this news was revealed and I'm not sure if Ruby told her mother what had happened or if she just let it go. Either way, she had to legally change her name to what she thought it was for the first 40 so years of her life.

So, there's a picture of Ruby, on what I imagine is her fifth or sixth birthday. I love the picture even though it doesn't really capture who she is -- I've never known her to be scowly or morose, she's actually very sweet and delightful. Like another Ruby I know.

P.S. Sorry about the tiny-ness of the photo. Pictures in those days were pretty small and my scanner couldn't make it any bigger.

Family Photo Friday: Archie and Ed

I've long wanted to participate in Andrea's Photo Booth Friday, but I just don't have enough photo booth photos to sustain it and really, it's so much cooler if you're using old photos rather than only ever brand new ones. I recently dug up a bunch of my grandma's old pictures and I'm scanning them into Flickr. Since my crafting is going to grind to a halt before long and I want to keep the blog rolling, I thought it might be fun to post some of them here and share the stories.

The above is a picture (I think) of my Grandfather, Ed. The caption on the back reads "Archie White and I gassing mites at Munson Annex. 1941". He would have been in his early 20s, and I guess this would have been shortly before he was shipped off to war. Munson is a rural prairie town when I think he worked as a grain elevator man. I don't have them, but there are bunches of photos of him in the early 40s (before he married my grandma) squiring around young ladies -- I think he was a rather popular figure. You can't tell with the gas mask, but he was a pretty handsome guy and seems to be having a lot of fun in a lot of these early pictures.

Grandpa passed away about 10 years ago, so I can't ask him any more about this day, but I think it makes for a pretty cool picture. And I have absolutely no idea who Archie White is. But he apparently did not like mites.