Earth Day 2013 otherwise known as Spring finally comes to Indiana

Spring finally showed up in my neck of the woods. We had seen a little peek of her but then we had two days of frost. Spring can be fickle here. But then we had a small explosion of color in the front yard. I am so excited. Though I am young-ish, I have the very old lady hobby of loving to garden. My Grandma Kennedy taught me how to garden when I was a little kid. She would give me an old serving spoon and a pot of dirt and show me all the nuances of making something beautiful grow. And my Mom and I would spend summer days baking in the sun as we weeded the little gardens sprinkled over our acre of yard. These are grape hyacinth flowers. We have some that came from the farm my Grandma grew up on in Southern Indiana. And I have some irises from my Grandma’s old house too. I like that our garden is full of our heritage. Our family history is in bloom from Spring to Summer and I can’t wait to get some more gardening done!

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My Easter

So I thought it was high time that I write in my blog. Originally it started out as a writing blog but as my photography skills got better my pictures kind of took over. And I am so grateful for all the positive response and new followers my pictures have brought me! But my talent has always been writing and so here we are.

Today is Easter Sunday and I consider myself a Catholic. But here I am blogging away but not in Church. I believe in God and the saints and the rituals of my religion but I have serious doubts about the politics of the Church. I have serious doubts about politics in any area in fact. But I have found it very hard to go back to Church even though I love so many things about it.

When I was growing up Church and Easter meant family. I remember going to Mass with my Grandma and Grandpa Kennedy and a gaggle of my cousins. Everyone lived closer to each other back then. We could take up three pews if we all tried to sit together, and we always did. I loved to hold hands with my family while we said the Our Father. I loved comparing our cute Easter dresses with Christy and Lauren and my Aunts. I loved standing side by side in the pews of the church with my family. I loved to pick out the voices of my Aunts as we all sang the different songs during Mass. My favorite songs were Church songs and I don’t know if it was the comfort I got knowing they were always the same ones and would always be the same ones, or if is was the words and melody that attracts me to every song I fall in love with. With Catholic Mass there is a great comfort in repetition, imagining I am saying the same prayers that had echoed through the Church for hundreds of years.

And then there was the family time after church. Whether it was an Easter egg hunt in the backyard or the pounds of ham devoured for brunch, I was with my family. At my other Grandparents house, my Great Grandma Adams always made these huge overstuffed Easter baskets and hide them around the house. I would wake up in the morning in my night gown and a knot of long curly hair on my head and groggily search the whole house. Ultimately to find an Easter basket taller then I was. And all the pictures I have of those times are some of my greatest treasures. Swarms of kids outside in their church clothes searching newly blooming flower beds for plastic eggs filled with goodies while being yelled at not to get dirty. Family pictures where my Dad and Tom have the same scowl on their faces partly from the Spring sun in their eyes and partly because they were forced into neckties. I remember trying eggs Benedict for the first time at my Aunt Jan’s house for one Easter. I love the feeling of a huge family stuffed into a slightly too small house and celebrating not only the holiday but simply being together.

But these days things have changed. Both my Grandpa and Grandma Kennedy have passed on and my Great Grandma Adams and my Uncle Joe and too many others. As the family has grown up, they have spread out too. I am lucky to get to see people from either side more than once a year. I know that all things change and the happiness they have found in growing up and having families of their own brings me so much joy. I thank God everyday for things like Facebook and cell phones because they keep us connected. But with Church it is harder to find the joy that used to be there. I still believe in God and living a good life. I say my Hail Marys often and ask for forgiveness when I feel I have done something wrong. But when I walk into Church, I can’t hear the beauty in the music anymore. I don’t feel the comfort in the prayers that I used to. And I hope the feeling won’t last forever, I honestly do. Until then I know God still hears me and that my Grandma Kennedy sends me signs to show me she is still watching over me and is my strongest Guardian Angel. And I will cherish the one or two times a years when I get to squish into a house a little too small for all of us.

So I do want to wish Happy Easter to everyone who celebrates whether religiously or bunny-centric or a little of both!

My Grandpa’s Birthday, The Aftermath

 

This is one of my favorite old Polaroids. The guy with the baby is my Dad. And I am sleeping away sweetly in his arms. Behind us are my two Grandpas. My Mom’s Dad, Grandpa Kennedy, is on the left and my Dad’s Dad, Grandpa Delon, is on the right. Today was my Grandpa Delon’s 80th birthday. But along with being happy for him and grateful to still have a close relationship with him, I inevitably started thinking about him being 80. That isn’t exactly young. A few years ago I lost my Grandma Kennedy, my Mom’s Mom. It was a devastating shock for our whole family. And my Mom’s Dad passed away when I was 19. He suffered for so long and I knew that no matter how sad it made me, he was truly in a better place. So the time I do have with my other Grandparents is very valuable to me. And I can only hope that my Grandpa stays healthy and happy because I am so very bad at saying good bye.

My Grandpa’s Birthday

Today my Grandpa turns 80. I just wanted to wish him a Happy Birthday today. He has always been an amazing man in my life and I love him very much. He has always been someone I looked up to. So I hope his day is cheerful and bright today.

Throwback Thursday Surprise

I decided to jump on the Throwback Thursday bandwagon on Instagram. I wanted to do something for my Mom because she does so much for me. When my Grandma, her Mom, passed away almost two years ago we got a whole bunch of photos among other things. Some were just piles of photos and some were framed . Honestly we have not touched the framed photos since we got them. It was a really hard loss for my whole family. So today I was looking for some older photos of my Mom to put together a collage-like picture idea. My Grandma had 10 kids and there are 29(ish) grand-kids and 7 great grand-babies(as of now) plus spouses. So needless to say she had a bazillion pictures. But she had each of her original 10 kids senior pictures framed above her bed. So I went to take my Mom’s senior picture out of its frame to copy it and behind her picture I found all these others. It was an amazing surprise. My Grandma really is a guardian angel in my life and I believe in the lives of my whole family. And some days she makes it a point to remind me that she is watching over me. So I shed a few tears and snapped this quick picture. I love it. And I love my Mom and my Grandma very much. I miss my Grandma very much still but I can still feel her with me in my heart.  F.Y.I – My Mom’s senior picture is the center one in the bottom row.

My absence and brighter days ahead

So I have been quiet on the blogging front for a few days. We had a death in the family and had to go to the wake and funeral in Cincinnati. It got me thinking of all the things my elders have passed on to me. One thing people might not know about me is that I love to garden. Both my Mom and Grandma Kennedy started me gardening at a very young age and I really find it fulfilling. And now that I have taken up photography, I love to capture photos of it too. I have bunches from last spring and summer. But along with gardening knowledge our family does something kind of unique (as far as I know). My Grandma K passed down actually seeds and flowers from her house and my Great-Grandma Solliday’s farm. Lots of the flowers in our gardens at the house came from the farm my Grandma grew up on in Washington, IN. And some come from the big house where she raised her 10 kids. And some come from the lake house where so many of my cherished summers were spent with my huge crazy family. And some come from the last house she lived in and passed away in. I even got a bucket of her old gardening tools when she passed away. And someday if I am very lucky I will have kids of my own to pass on starts of all these plants to. I feel a special link between my Grandma and my Mom and I when it comes to getting soil under my fingernails and I will forever be grateful for that. The first picture is of a pink-purple bearded iris that came from the big house and the second picture is some of the gardening tools I inherited. Can’t you tell Spring is a coming!!

A very special lady

The lovely lady with the dog in her lap is my Great-Aunt Jane. And sad to say she passed away earlier this week. My Mom (the other lovely lady in the photo) was devastated. But my Great-Aunt Jane led a long life in which she devoted herself to taking care of so many people. My first thought, after some tears, was that all those people, I am sure, were so excited to greet her in heaven. My Grandpa and Grandma and my Uncle Joe and Jack and Pat and probably most of all her husband. Great-Aunt Jane contributed all of the historical knowledge I have about the Kennedy side of the family. I will miss going to the Cincinnati art museum with her and I will miss having brunch at that fancy restaurant that is really a hotel, that always reminded me of a castle. She was an amazing lady.

Preggers!!

This is a picture of my friend Jen at her baby shower. Isn’t she gorgeous!? I can not have babies of my own (not that I am even dating anyone) and some days that is unbearably saddening. It hurts in a very deep place in my heart. And sometimes it is hard to hear about so many of my friends and family having babies or being pregnant. But something changes once I get to see them. It makes my heart so much brighter and happy. I mean I would never deny someone I care about the happiness of a baby. I could never be sad knowing how amazing being a mom will be for them. I am so excited for all the mommies in my life.

A short pilgrimage….

This is a picture of the shrine of Saint Mother Theodore Guerin. Mom and I took a short trip to St. Mary-of-the-Woods near Terre Haute, Indiana last fall. The story of her life and her ties to Indiana was one of the most amazing things I have heard. The Sisters of Providence who live there keep the grounds in harmony with nature which I think only helps to make you feel closer to God. And I have to say that the little road trips that Mom and I take 2 or 3 times a year are always my favorites.

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So proud of my Aunt Jan!!! #myauntlovestosing #myauntsingsbetterthanyouraunt #family #ilovemyfamily #christmasconcert #christmassparkle #christmastime