365-80 black & white jungle

365-79 Fans

365-78 Equinox Sculpture

365-77 'Forest' Park

 In Spanish, Bosque means Forest, so the name of this park is really Forest Park.

365-76

365-75 Lose something?

365-74 Safety First*

Mommytography 365 Assignment 24: Laughter

In taking a walk downtown, came across these guys who look out for the average citizens safety. Boy do they love to ham it up for the camera!

365-73 What a cutie!

Encountered this precious pup on a walk.

365-72 Two Birds

These guys like their space.

365-71 Who's that lady?

 Quite bizarre to look up at the Old Red Courthouse and see these in the window. The Courthouse is a historical landmark and now a museum.

True Story (?) Tuesday

One of my many hobbies is genealogy and I’ve done pretty well on my mom’s side of the family thanks to my mom’s cousin. He is a writer and has written a couple of books about the history of the teeny, tiny town where my parents are from in Zacatecas, Mexico. In the books he includes details of some of the founding members of the town. Through these books I was able to fill in some of the blanks on mom’s side. My father’s side is a different story. The buck stops with my paternal grandfather and pretty much everyone is now deceased (including my father) that could help fill in some details.

A couple of years ago I was asking my Tio (Tio means uncle and he was one of the few remaining descendants on my father’s maternal side at that time), of the history of my dad’s family.  I first wrote of my Tio Nacho when he passed away a few months back. That whole side of the family can remember anything and everything. Unfortunately I did not inherent that gene. My sister did though, so unfair. Anyway when I asked him if he knew when the family might have come over from Spain he began to tell me about my great, great (I’m not sure how many greats back) grandfather who came over with his brother. They came upon this area of Mexico and decided they liked it. Both were single and still sowing their wild oats. One of them had what he thought was a great idea.

Now this is where you will see a typical macho-type behavior – he thought it would be ‘fun’ to see who could populate the town the most. Now since they of course both had the same last name (Martin del Campo – the whole thing is the last name), how would they distinguish between all these children and future descendants? Easy -  one of them would shorten the last name to Martinez. So all the descendants of Martinez would be from the line of one brother and all the descendants of Martin del Campo would be the line of the other brother.

How they kept track I don’t know. And horror of horrors did they go around impregnating every girl they came across? I surely hope not. Perhaps they just married and convinced their wives to have as many children as possible.  And then convinced their sons to do the same? It boggles the mind.

This totally makes no sense but what can you expect from a macho man? Tio Nacho could have totally been pulling my leg. However……It would kind of explain why there are so many families with these last names in that area.And the line has blurred on whether one is from the same line of family or not. So crazy.

As far as tracing my family history I think I’m doomed to failure.

365.70 Cherub love

365-69 Downtown

365-68 Pink flowers

Not sure what these are.....

365-67 Feather

A lone feather left behind.

Have you ever?

Have you ever wondered what life would have been like if you’d married your first crush?

Have you ever wondered if you never married, never had children what would your life be like?

Have you ever done something super wild, out of the norm that would totally freak your family out of they knew?

Have you ever wished a relative would go away just so you wouldn’t have to deal with them anymore? I mean go away forever (or at least a very long time and far, far away).

Have you ever wondered what you would be like if you had been born a boy? Would you have been a better man?

Have you ever thought how you might govern or rule your city if given the chance? What changes would you make?

Have you ever wished to go back in time to right a wrong or relive a moment?

Have you ever wanted to just go away and leave it all…and then your little one comes along with hugs and “I love you mommy” and the thought becomes horrific and preposterous.

Have you ever wished upon a star and it came true.

Have you ever wondered what life holds in store for your children? Your grandchildren? Will this be a better planet? A better country?

Have you ever wanted to go back to a simpler time – when shops closed on Sunday so all could devote the time to church and/or family, when you could let your kids play outside with no fear?

Have you ever stopped on your way to work to just take in the miracle of a glorious morning and give thanks for all your blessings.

Have you ever thrown your fears to the wind to do something and found it was the best thing you ever did?

Have you? Ever?

365-66 Potato Pest

I think something is going after my potato plants.

365-65 Taco night!

Went to a new restaurant today (Los Cabos) and tried their version of Mexico City Tacos. Yummy! Small tacos with choice of chicken, steak or carnitas, all the fixins and a dollop of Mexican crema on top. On the side Mexican rice and borracho bean.s

What did we do before we had the internet?

Or all the other technology that is now so affordable that everybody seems to have it. I mean can you remember? Or for some of you, can you remember a time when you did not have internet or cell phones? I do. I can even remember only having about 5 or 7 channels on the TV to choose from which of course means we played outside more. We didn’t have 150 channels to cruise through and then still not find anything to watch. We didn’t have the World Wide Web to search endlessly and still be bored. And if we went outside to play the only way mom could call us home would be to yell out loud “Dinner!” And if we heard we’d come home otherwise we kept playing till dark.

Our favorite thing to play was Barbie’s of course. About three of us girls would get together with all our dolls, Barbie clothes and other doll accessories and play all afternoon. We were probably in second or third grade. Do they still play Barbie’s at that age? I know my girls did but then it seems they quickly outgrew that phase – and way too soon in my opinion.

We also played dress up! I would love going to garage sales with my mom to scout for gowns I could use to play in and pretend I was of course a princess! Or a trapped damsel in distress waiting for my knight in shining armor to rescue me. We whiled away many an afternoon playing one or the other as well a hula hooping or jacks. We all lost touch as we grew up and went our separate cliques and ways but recently we did find each other again on Facebook! Two of us went to lunch and had a grand old time catching up.

As I got older I also discovered books! I could not believe we could borrow books from a library, for free. And there were so many. My favorites were the Mrs Piggle Wiggle series and another featuring a girl named Ginny. For the life of me I can’t remember (good old pre-menopause kickin in again) the name of the books but I remember the character and the stories.

What always intrigued me the most about the library was the adults only section. What could be back there? They looked just like all the other books. Of course the only reason I was intrigued was because it was forbidden. And once you do have access to the forbidden it loses its mystery and then is no big deal which I found out once I was old enough to go to that section. And now that I’ve read a few, the romance novels probably should have been in that section as well. But I’m so glad they weren’t.

The best thing now about having internet though is that you can do research so much quicker online than going through a million encyclopedias.

What else did I do before the internet?

Catch grasshoppers, frogs and fireflies

Ride my bike or roller skate

Talk on the phone with friends for hours

Listen to records in my room

Bake! Cakes, cookies, tarts

Scrapbook

Clean

Read

Play