Fiona's 8th Birthday

This is her sister.....Fiona's  in In the extras… she had her “portrait” blip at our party on Friday…. Then she had her friends overnight on sat, but we did stop to wish her Happy Birthday on the exact day, bring gifts, have a leftover cupcake and talk to her family …Maple just loves to be picked up!  so you get a rarer photo of her sister Tatum ( who I miss seeing now that she’s in high school). and Dad with Maple.


“Death cleaning” progress:   there were several bags, boxes of my Mother’s stuff in my studio I decided to tackle next.  I even had brought one bag to the island for one summer but brought it home again, un looked at.  :-)    Now was the time.  spent all weekend reading the contents of 1 bag of letters etc… from the bill for her wedding buffet :  100 people (it was a double wedding with her twin) at 85 cents each in 1936!  to war ration stamps, to letters in Swedish from my grandmother, to notes from me to them from girl scout camp  (I passed my tippy canoe test) and lots of copies of letters my very funny Dad wrote to me there and at school —from the dog, the cat, the bird, the car etc etc…  I was good…I only saved a few to put in my new shiny plastic  (to throw away) box.  Most of it is gone.  Not easy.   I brought with me today, several thank you notes from this son to my parents, for Christmas or birthday gifts.   He can throw them out.  But Tatum loved reading them!  (“thank you for the $  Im saving for a Les Paul guitar)   Son P “wondered” if I had another point in bringing them.   Well…. of course!  :-)   In the Death Cleaning book I was heartened to learn that all the grandchildren of this author also never wrote thank you notes….of any sort…it seems to be a VERY common thing, among my grandmother friends too,.    It’s not that we didn’t teach their parents..(we probably had to nag or bribe)  but it seems to me it would be so easy for this generation of texters……doesn’t have to be a piece of paper in an envelope with a stamp. 
But I think I’ll stop with that.