Cousins - Karen's First Birthday

I love quests.  I love gathering, researching, compiling information.  And I always feel rather satisfied when the pieces come together into a cohesive story.  The following images are the result of one such quest.

The pictures were in one of Aunt Nancy's photo albums.  They weren't labeled and they were scattered throughout the pages.  As I sorted her photos, I realized I had three images of the same event.  Emails from RoseMarie and Sue confirmed that they were they two oldest children.  The three of us guessed that the baby was Karen.

Then I emailed Aunt Katherine and as Paul Harvey always said, "...now you know the rest of the story."  

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Click the link below for the second page:

Renewed Admiration

I love this picture of Aunt Maymerose and Uncle Robert.  They are so young.  They look so happy and even glamorous.

From their marriage, came two cute little girls.  RoseMarie, named in part for Grandmother and Maudie (Mary) and Sue, whose name is Nancy Sue, named after Aunt Nancy.


Unfortunately, later in life, things went somewhat awry.  Especially unfortunate is that the trickle down impacted their sweet little girls.  Although the story isn't mine to tell, my feelings about my cousins is. (or "are".....let's see..."feelings" would be plural....or in this case is it collective.....WHAT-ev-er!!)

Granddaddy's Transportation

These are Granddaddy's horses and his carriage (reportedly, there is also a picture somewhere of these horses pulling Granddaddy's hearse).

The other two are  from a book I have entitled Cars of the Fabulous '50s.  (Isn't anyone curious why I own a book about cars?)  Anyway, Grandmother and Granddaddy had matching Dodges with the pushbutton shifter. (See picture to the right)

Hers was pink and white, his solid black. I'm not at all certain that the year was 1959, but the black one stayed

around long enough for me to drive it.


I'm pretty sure Uncle Kenneth wound up with the black one in 1978.

They were very cool cars.  But were they any cooler than the white horses and the carriage?  Not so sure. I love them both.

Thanks to Sue for sharing her picture of the horses and carriage

Ah Ha! Cake Mystery Solved

I was wrong.  Well, I was 1/2 wrong.  The cake recipe we've been baking all these years did come from Aunt Vena.  That's the 1/2 right part.  However, there was a similar recipe that belonged to Grandmother (Rowena Hayden Dunn).  That's the 1/2 wrong part.  I had no idea she had a Chocolate Spice Cake recipe.  And it appears that over the years, Mama had somewhat combined the two, using ingredients and techniques from each.

I've struggled through the years with the Aunt Vena cake.  It rises nicely, but there's not enough structure to the cake to support the center.  As a result, the it always sags a bit.  Frustrating (although still incredibly delicious)