Today marks the 57th anniversary of the first lunar landing on July 20, 1969. I still get chills every time I watch the footage looking out the window of the lunar module as the dust swirls and the module touches down. "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." Neil Armstrong The Apollo Space Program successfully landed six missions on the moon. Astronaut Jim Irwin piloted the lunar module for Apollo 15 and landed on the moon on July 30, 19

I attended a family reunion a few weeks ago and of course we all took pictures of each other with our cellphones. I commented to one of my aunts that we all have photos trapped in our phones, never to be seen again. She replied that she missed sitting on the couch with others and looking through photo albums. I agreed. Photography has changed tremendously since the 80s! Back then, we didn't have "Instagram;" we had "Instamatic!" Before any special occasion , on checklist i

I love the idea of knitting. I love looking at knitting books and magazines and the patterns they feature. I love going into knitting shops and seeing all those lovely different yarns. I have conquered knitting scarves and simple hats. I have even knitted a few simple baby sweaters. All that remains is to knit a sweater for myself. This is my Mt. Everest of knitting. I have started a handful of times to knit a sweater for myself and abandoned every attempt. I've known for

Today is Thursday, July 2nd, 2026. In two days, we will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. We are currently hosting the World Cup with Canada and Mexico. Happily, the US has made it to the Round of 16. We still have lots of exciting games to look forward to. I choose to focus on these events. Thanks to Ancestry.com and findagrave.com, I have discovered at least five ancestors who either fought as soldiers in the American Revolution or co

Several years back we were on a road trip and listened to local radio stations all along the way. My husband and I travel the way we did in the 80s: we listen to the radio. Back in the 80s we did listen to cassettes and CDs too but those have gone by the wayside... We passed through many small towns and in one of those towns we heard two news stories that captured our attention. The first was an announcement that a certain elderly widow, affectionately known as "The Pie La

I don't know how far this story has traveled outside of Texas, but a giraffe has gone missing. Her name is Gracie and she lives on Cedar Hollow Ranch in Leakey, TX, about 100 miles northwest of San Antonio. Cedar Hollow Ranch is home to an exotic breeding program. According to the latest information I could find, she has been spotted on game camera footage and appears to be in good shape. Still, there are predators out there who might try to take her on, so she needs to co

One thing I actually enjoy about reaching my current age is that I've lived long enough to look back on all those times when bad things could have happened and didn't. We moved to our current location in 1996. Since that time I have made at least one annual trip to the state I grew up in. The journey takes about a day and a half. Sometimes my husband was able to accompany us and sometimes I made the journey alone with two young kids in tow. In all those trips, the car ne

Sitting here now I cannot tell you, without googling, where the last World Cup was held or who won. And, if I'm being honest, I was mostly indifferent to the World Cup being held in this hemisphere until a few days ago. I did make a point to watch the match between the USA and Paraguay and of course I was delighted to see the USA win. I have since watched other matches and I find that the action off the field is as interesting as the action on the field. I have been aware

A few years back I developed an interest in genealogy. A great aunt on my mother's side of the family had traced the line all the way back to an ancestor who had come over from Ireland and had fought in the American Revolution. Tracing one's roots in those days before the internet was not easy! It meant going in person to offices of vital records to locate birth, death, and marriage certificates. It meant contacting churches and cemetery societies to locate the graves of f

When I was growing up we always had a subscription to National Geographic. I loved that magazine! When it arrived in the mail I would devour it from cover to cover. And the photographs! They ran the gamut from scenes from every day life, to disturbing images of human suffering, to breathtakingly beautiful beaches. I remember one issue in particular that featured the islands of the South Pacific. There was a photo of a young Polynesian woman wearing a traditional sari and

Welcome to my blog. Lately I've been feeling very nostalgic about the 80s, especially the lack of social media. Back then if we wanted to know what our friends or family were up to we called them on the landline telephone and we had their numbers memorized. Today we have these astonishing devices we can use to call someone on the other side of the world regardless of the time of day and then look up a good recipe for Buttermilk Pie. It's ok to visit the past as long as we do