My younger years....

I uncovered some old pictures today that I didn't even know I had, so I thought I'd post them up here....

This is me around 6 months old...my eyes were so blue! But they're green now.

This is me at the state fair when I was 2 years old....

Me and my mom in 1976...It was a 4th of July picture...

In this next picture, I was around the same age I think. My dad wrote on the back 5 years old, but I can see the date written on the bottom and it said 1976, so I have no idea why he thought I was 5 then!

Here I am at age 3....

And this is me wearing the same dress but being really silly. I loved wigs and wearing my mom's shoes!

Here I am in my 1st grade school photo....age 6. I think I was sporting the Dorthy Hamill look here...

This is my second grade school photo....

Me and the Easter Bunny...age 7

My 3rd grade photo...what a hideous haircut...lol

Me and my brother and the Easter Bunny...I believe I was 8 here...

This is where I started getting super awkward....lol age 9 at Morrow Beach....

This was me and my friend Terra at Great America for my 10th bday....I don't look 10! And I've definitely looked better....lol

And this last picture is definitely the epitome of awkward and ugly....lol  I was 11 here....Thank god I eventually got those hideous teeth fixed!

So as you can see, I went from cute to not so cute, back to cute and then very much not cute.....lol Now you can see why I liked how I looked in high school! lol

I almost miss having a baby....

Almost....but not entirely...lol But looking back at old pictures of my son when he was just a baby, I can't help but feel nostalgic for those times a little bit. Sure, they were hard. And so many times I couldn't wait for him to get older so my life could get easier. But now that he's almost 13 and wants nothing to do with me, I find myself missing those early days when I was still his favorite person in the world to see.Those days are long gone! But here's a short trip back into the early days of being a parent....

 This is pretty much par for the course for a very long time. So cute, yet so angry and loud!

But thankfully he slept sometimes...

Please excuse how huge I look, but I just squished a very large person out of my body...lol As you can see, our kitty wanted to be close, but felt the need to hide just in case the beast awoke....

But generally the kitties tolerated having a new little person in the house very well....

Nick looks like a blow up doll baby here....lol

Simon protecting his little person....

We always tried to dress Nick in the coolest of clothes...I found this tie dyed onesie at a hippie flea market...

Is this not the cutest thing you've ever seen?

This was Nick's first Halloween...he went as Superman of course! Too little to eat candy, but that didn't stop us from going out anyway....

This was Nick's most treasured possession for the first 3 years of his life. A talking Barney (that I removed the voicebox out of almost immediately) that my brother had actually gotten as a gag gift from someone for xmas years before. He donated it to Nick, and this was the thing he couldn't live without.

Here is the little monster getting into trouble with the toilet paper....lol

Hanging out with one of the kitties....

Riding around in his Lego dumptruck...You can see part of me in the corner giving him a hand...

Nick's second Halloween....what a cute little Pooh bear!

One of my favorite pics....

And last but not least, I think this picture was foreshadowing for the future....little did we know this wig would be the style he chose to wear 10 years later....

Let's contrast and compare....

Then:

Now:

I have thousands more baby pictures, but this was just a couple of my faves....I do miss my little guy! Where did he go?

A look way back in the past....

I don't have a lot of old photos of my family, but I managed to put together a nice group of pictures that I'd like to share. And thanks to the wonder of Photoshop alot of these very faded discolored photos suddenly look like new again! If my dad were still here, I think he'd love uploading his old pictures and fixing the fadedness and bringing them back to life again. But in his absence I did a little bit for him....

And speaking of my dad, this is him....I really don't know when these pictures were taken but my best guess is the 1950's at some point. I do know these were taken in Atlantic City on the boardwalk....(click to make it bigger)

My dad was born and raised in Brooklyn New York. And I know he didn't move to California until the early 1960's. But I'm really not sure when exactly...

I do know that he was an avid car collector back in the day and he had some really nice ones...here are a few of them that he's showing off...

I'm not sure when or where these were taken but I think it was probably when he still lived in New York....

My dad was married to someone else before he met my mom. And he had two daughters with that woman. I met her one time and all I remember is that she didn't speak very good English and she didn't much care for me or my mother. But I guess who can blame her? Not many women like their ex husbands new families I guess....lol But these are my half sisters circa 1967 or thereabouts...

The tall one is Jeanette and the littler one is Ellen. Ellen died in a car accident very shortly after this picture was taken and I believe this was the last picture of her that anyone has...

My dad divorced his first wife soon after Ellen died. I think the death of a child can either bring people closer, or push them apart. For them, it was definitely the latter. They had also endured the loss of a baby not too long before Ellen's death too. The baby was stillborn. I don't know much about it because my dad would cry every time he tried to tell me, and I never wanted to push him for details...

But after his divorce, he met my mom. They worked together and she was much younger than he was...here there are soon after they met....

 This picture below shows me that at one point in their lives they were actually happy together, despite the stories my mom always tells me....

These pictures were taken at my Aunt Lil's house...here she is with my mom:

I had grandparents (which I'll get to) but this woman was the one I considered my grandma the whole time I was growing up. She was funny and kind and cool and a very strong independent spirit and I was always very close to her.

My parents were married for about 5 years and told they'd never have children. My mom was supposedly unable to have them. But as evidenced by my existence, they were wrong! And while my mom was pregnant, she and my dad began building their dream home together. A ranch style house in the country with lots of farmland.

Here you can see my dad putting the finishing touches on the place with my very pregnant mom (in a hideous mu-mu dress) next to him.

And this is my mom and my Aunt Lil....

This is my dad, my Aunt Lil and my Uncle Freddie....

This was a view of our land ....

And here is the view of the house with nothing around it yet....

And here is a picture of when it snowed....I believe this was in 1975  the winter after I was born...this was the last time it snowed in this town until last year. There was 35 years in between snowstorms....kinda cool huh?

Here is a picture that I believe was taken in 1976 or somewhere in that time frame. This is my Uncle Freddie, my Uncle Carl, my Aunt Lil, and my dad (holding our kitty named Didi)

And on to the grandparents...I never knew my dad's father at all and I don't have any pictures of him. But this is my dad and his family:

Left to right, my dad, my grandma, my Aunt Mary, my Aunt Ida, and I don't know who the guy is. Ida's husband I assume? These people are like strangers to me so I'm not entirely sure who everyone is. But I'm truly glad I did not inherit my dad's families nose...yikes! I think my dad was the best looking of the entire family....

This is a picture of my mom with my grandfather...I never knew him either. He died a couple years after this picture was taken....This was taken in Atlantic City...

And finally....this is my mom's mom. My grandma Elise.

If I find any other old pictures, I'm gonna scan them and put them here because its nice to have a recorded history of my family, what little I have to post up....