Friends, Family and Who was Aunt Alice?

Tucson

Jan 10

Happy Anniversary Ric and Janet!!!



I love it when my cousin Ted starts reading my Aunt Ruby's birthday book! I get a call every time with "who was??" I, then, in turn, (since I have no clue either!) call my sister, who is a wealth of information when it comes to this and she explains it all to me; which, I, in turn, call Ted back! Okay...have I totally lost you? Aunt Ruby, (my father's sister) and my mother kept "Birthday"Books in which was recorded births, deaths, marriages, etc. Those in themselves are are great treasure troves of information into our family history. But to decipher them sometimes can be challenging as to who is what and where and who belongs to whom. The Spaid Family Reunion is scheduled for the last week in February and the first week in March and one of the things that we want to do is go over these two books and see if we can put 2 and 2 together and at least come up with 3! OH, and who was Aunt Alice? She was my great grandfather's sister, or my grandmother's aunt, or my great-great aunt! (Still with me here?)And, as family lore goes, her daughter, Eleanor Hicks was a Broadway or movie star to some level. So, of course, I couldn't let well enough alone, I had to find out more and I "googled" her and here is what I came up with...Eleanor Hicks. Now, who knows if this is the correct one or not, but it makes for a good story!

In other happenings, I want you all to know I found a meat fork...actually I found two! The first was located at none other than my locale Ace Hardware store...you know, the store you go to when you cannot find what ever you are looking for in a big box store! They had one, lonely meat fork...and I snapped it up for my brother. Then, Al comes out with "we could use another one"--at which time I challenged him as to WHY? Of course, with Al if one is good, ten is better (it runs in his family...long story) so when I was in Bed, Bath and Beyond yesterday I found another meat fork...they had just gotten in a new supply! Seems as if they had a "run" on them right before Christmas...who'd thunk?

Yesterday I had the fortune to meet up with a long time friend Ginny Blaine for lunch. Ginny hails from Seattle and I hadn't seen her in way too long of a time. She was in Tucson for a meeting and we had the chance to catch up on nine years of each others lives in just over an hour and half! It was great to see her and she is such a neat lady, and lady is the very appropriate word for Ginny. She is a very successful business woman, wife, mother and friend and seems to keep them all balanced well. And on top of it, she is so darn cute! AND she doesn't seem to age. What gives??? It was her birthday yesterday and she wasn't going to tell me, but it slipped out, so I treated for lunch...after all, it is very rarely that I get to treat her anyway. It was fun and we vowed it wouldn't be so long in between times from now on. I hadn't realized how much I missed seeing her until I got together with her yesterday. It is reassuring to know long time friends are still there, even if you don't get together very often.



Ginny

Other than that, our lives have been pretty routine! We had dinner with the other Wraspir Cousin's on Tuesday and Bobbi and Neil were getting ready to hit the road and wander down Texas way. I have been busy still trying to put together our cruise pictures and it has gotten to the point that all the ruins we saw are beginning to look alike! It it wasn't for the date on the camera, I don't know if I could tell where in the heck we were! You know, this is a ruin and this is a ruin, but which ruin is this one? ARG!

Weather has been okay. Kinda' cool and windy at times and we did have some rain over the weekend, which was very needed.

So, until next time, hope this finds everyone happy and healthy and living life to the fullest.