August 2011 cousin lineup

And heeeeeere they are!  No kidding, this may be the best of the couch shots ... not everyone was happy, and two boys had hangnails to bite off. Cute kids, no matter what their moods or poses!

Miles, Weston, Hannah, Vivian, Owen, and Ethan

It's a Tannerannieversary

Happy Anniversary #6 to Annie and Tanner! 

Happy Birthday to Doreen, too!

(Photos courtesy of the E&E Dellon photography collection!)

Pictures with captions

Brave cowpokes----braver horse!

Wild and crazy Westy!

Gpappy and Ethan, looking pensive...or maybe lazy?

Owen, mulling over Doodle Day

 Ethan, thinking about what he'd do on Yes Day!

Here's what happens when you ask a certain little boy
to look up at the camera.

Gpappy, Miles, and Tanner winding Grandpappy's clock

 Two freshly-scrubbed little guys :0 )

Grandparents' Day

It's been a while since we were together with Charlie, Angie, Ethan, Owen, Grandpa Dean and Grandma Darla. The last time was in Richfield, and there was snow on the ground. Snow wouldn't stand a chance lately, by the way.  

Ethan and Owen are trying to figure out the multiple grandparent situation, something that takes a while to grasp. To help them with a visual to refer to when they get confused, Gpappy suggested a grandparent/grandchildren photo. Angie offered to be the photographer. After several shots, Ethan finally decided he was having a good time. Owen? Not so sure!

Come back soon,  Grandpa Dean and Grandma Dar!

Boy cousins

It's another boy cousin weekend at our house. Let's get those chicas here from NC soon!  E and O came on Thursday with their mommy. While she did some daycare scouting and other errands, we played outside and waited for the mail to come. The very nice mail carrier gave E and O suckers, which they loved, but she also honked the mail truck horn for them without warning -- which they didn't love so much. They forgave her for startling them because she was so nice.

 Unfortunately, the mail carrier didn't have a sucker for the older children, 

just for the toddler set.

On Friday evening we were happy to see Mr. Weston, who did a little crawling in the sun room after supper. Looks like he's trying to make a get-away.

He managed to make some repairs on the toy vacuum cleaner, too. 

What a great helper!

Big brother Miles did some serious playing this afternoon. He looks like he's contemplating a chess move here, but he's actually trying to decide whether Mr. Hooper or a fireman should drive the garbage truck.

Here's a classic Miles-smiling-with-a-crinkly-nose shot. Looks like the fireman won the front spot on the garbage truck, with Mr. Hooper in the back, and a clown is delivering the mail.

Time to stay cool. Is it possible?

P.S.

On Sunday Annie, Miles, and Westy played and napped at our house while Tanner golfed and Grandpa Dave & Grandma Doreen visited a niece who is in the hospital. Here's some of the action..

We finished off the afternoon with a Skype session. The NC contingent appears ghostly here, only because I haven't checked to see how to take a screen shot on Skype. I promise to learn for next time.

 

 

Reading is fun

Ethan and Owen were here for a couple of days with Charlie and Angie. Charlie started his new job (HOORAY!) on Monday and Angie took the boys to her new classroom to look around, have some snacks, and play while she got a start  on sorting and organizing. While they were visiting, Owen took a couple of visits to the doctor to have a nasty bug bite examined that had caused swelling on his face and anxiety for the rest of us. He's reportedly doing much better now -- thank goodness -- after meds, a CT scan, and two shots. He's a brave little boy.

This was supposed to be about reading being fun, so here are some pictures to show I'm not a liar. 

Everybody enjoys a good book before bedtime, even the grown-ups!

While Owen and Angie were getting O's bug bite checked out, 

Ethan helped Dad/Larry/Grandpappy figure out why 

"A is for zoo" in the mysterious book Q is for Duck.

Bertha Amelia Johnson Potts

Jill asked me to write something for her blog about Grams, my paternal grandmother, as we approach what would have been her 120^th birthday on July 23^rd. She didn’t make it to 120, but did make it to 89, when she died in January 1981. Our kids and Don and Janet’s boys were all very young when Grams died, and so barely knew her. Don and I grew up with her living in our home near Buffalo, and we of course knew her very well.

Grams was Bertha Amelia Johnson Potts, born in 1891 in Chicago, the child of Swedish immigrants Nils Carl Johnson and Augusta Nelson. She had four sisters, Hulda, Emma, Edna, and Nellie (Helen). Hulda and Emma died young, and only Nellie outlived Grams. Nils was in the carting business (using a trailer bed drawn by horses to move furniture and other goods) in Chicago, and eventually ran a boarding house (which Augusta really managed, and in which the girls worked). Grams remembered clearly back to about the mid 1890s, and early electrification, coal burners with eisenglass (mica) windows, and Christmas trees with REAL candles (and fire buckets close by in case something went horribly wrong). She remembered clearly when her uncle Monty (Robert) returned home from the Spanish American War and surprised everyone by coming in a window at night in his uniform.

Bertha with her father Nils, and Lawrence Donald (Larry/Dad's father) in 1917

Grams went to public schools in Chicago, and then to a school of commerce to learn technical office skills. She met and married Walter Lawrence Potts (1875-1945) in Chicago, and they were married there in 1912. Grams and Walter had four children, Marjorie, Lawrence Donald (my dad), Doris, and Walter Francis (who died at age 10 months). They started out in Chicago, but later moved to Buffalo, Cincinnati, and Columbus. Grams was a homemaker, and raised three kids to adulthood, all of whom went to college.  She and Walter lived on the west side of Columbus in the 1940s, and he died there in 1946 from complications of a broken femur suffered in a fall. Grams, not even 55 then, packed up and moved to Buffalo to be close to my parents, and lived in an apartment until she moved into my folks’ new home in 1947-48. She worked for a while at a small shop in Buffalo, and then from time to time as a babysitter and a live-in companion for older women. Don and I can’t remember a time in which she was not part of our home family. Every year she would travel south to visit Doris and Ed Jones and cousins Linda and David, and then (usually in late winter) go out to California to visit with Aunt Marge and Uncle Johnnie Lowrie.

Grams was a temperate woman in all respects. I don’t recall ever seeing her angry. She was proud of taking and being faithful to the temperance pledge of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). She never knew it, but she accidentally violated her oath when she once took some orange juice out of pitcher in the ‘fridge without knowing my mom had mixed vodka into it for “screwdrivers”. She told my mother, “Lil, that orange juice is really good. What kind is it?” Mom couldn’t bring herself to tell Grams. Part of Grams’ mild demeanor might be due to being raised in a Swedish-immigrant household; most of the Swedes I’ve known are confrontation-averse and pretty much mind their own business (not so much aloof as non-social). She was very careful about how she dealt with family matters and my parents, and often seemed apologetic about living with us. Having a live-in grandparent was much more common then than now, and it seemed completely normal and even comforting to Don and me. She was a loving and caring person, and Don and I have very fond memories of her. Until the very end of her life Grams was not a burden to her family (although my mother experienced quite a bit of stress connected to memory troubles when Grams was in her 80s). She was always eager to find out what Don and I were doing, and I know that being around us kept her young. Well, that and a mild crush she had on Jack LaLanne, the TV Hollywood exercise guy with whom she did daily exercises until her early 80s.

Grams was fortunate to know and enjoy three of her five great grandchildren, Elisabeth, Dan, and Charlie. Mike and Annie were born too late to be held and cooed at by her. The nearby pictures show her in her last years with the kids. She was a lovely, sweet lady who was an important part of our families. Happy Birthday, Grams.

Grams playing solitaire in her bedroom, with Elisabeth's help! (December 1977)

Grams holding baby Charlie, Elisabeth, Danny, and Janet (July 1979)