It starts at the bottom
So this is going to be pretty condensed since quite a bit has gone on since my last update. For starters, I had a miscarriage in March....one of the most difficult times of my life. I thank Jehovah for the blessing of our families and so very many friends that helped us through it.
During April, I went to my very first baseball game at Fenway. We saw the Red Sox whip the butts of the Minnesota Twins. It was Great! We ate a bunch of stadium food and did the wave a few times. What a great night! In April I also went from a red-head to a brown haired girl with blond highlights. Since then, I've been going gradually more and more blonde.
During May, I had a wonderful visit with my old friends the Hernandez's and Clara and Tessie in Arizona. I got to meet Clara's new hubby, Dan and her new step daughter, Lauren. That was such a great visit. I haven't scrapbooked OR scanned any of my pictures from that trip.
During June, Richie and I spent about ten days in California with my family. Took lots of pictures and had a great time visiting all my old haunts and seeing old friends. We even squeezed in a trip to Great America. My friend Terese flew down from Seatle and took family pictures for us. They came out so AMAZING! I've made lots of copies so if anyone would like some recent pictures of Richie & I or any of my family, I've got plenty. I'm trying to remember who I've sent them to and who I haven't. So if you haven't gotten any yet, please drop me a line.
We had our district convention at the end of June and our special assembly day this month. So needless to say, I've been pretty busy.
Looking forward to the future!
-Sondi
So here's what's new.... We spent a lovely weekend in a cozy cabin in Vermont last weekend. We came home right after a huge snow storm and dug out our driveway. The temperatures have been fairly mild this week though...high 30's and low 40's. Almost makes me think spring is around the corner....ALMOST, but not quite.
I bought my plane tickets for a few days in Arizona in early March and a week in California with my family over the last week of March. Expedia.com Rules!!! Got both roundtrip tickets for $200 !!
Let's see...what else is new? . I'm still trying to dig through my piles of hundreds of millions of photographs yet to be scrapbooked (okay, a MILD exaggeration...but only mild!). I just finished scrapbooking the pictures from my last trip to California (from last September). Hard to believe it was five months ago. Feels like last week. But thankfully, my dad's heart is healing well and mom is recovered from her surgery as well so things are looking up. Thank you to everyone who expressed concern and also for all the prayers. Jehovah is truly an answerer of prayers.
Oh wait ! I HAVE NEWS!! Last week, while corresponding with some distant relatives also working on their family tree, I got an email from someone who knew someone that might be related to me. It turns out that my dad and aunt have a half sister who, up until recently thought she was an only child...little did she know, she was a Grotton AND I have several new first cousins that I never knew existed ! ! I've scheduled for a weekend in Maine to meet them. Pretty exciting stuff!!
So that's the latest and greatest news with me.... If you have time, check out my new website at www.myfamily.com Just use the Username: Grotton and Password: visit I loaded a bunch of family pictures ...some that are pretty funny. Love to all!
-Sondi
Well, I have one roll of film left from Mikeala & Stacy's visit left to be developed. To the right is a pic of them while they were here. They left yesterday for the Big Apple. Today I added some additional pages to my Boston Friends page as well as a page from earlier this month. More to follow (I have several more rolls of film to get scanned in over the next week or so) so stay tuned!
Well, it's been months and months and I'm thinking it's about time for some work on this ol' page. It's been sitting around gathering dust with no new links, pictures or updates. OH! The humanity!!!! So anyway, today begins the first steps to clean things up.
As for updates...it's been a really busy couple of months. As many know, my dad suffered a pretty severe health problem last month and I went out to California to be with my family. I have some pictures to add from that visit. Thank you to all my dear friends of both coasts who were so supportive during that time and continuing on to the present. Without your love, support, prayers, and uncounted meals and kindnesses I'm sure things would not have turned out so well. Jehovah has truly blessed me and my family.
After returning from California I had a week or so of rest and then went for a girls weekend in CapeCod. Wendy and Beth and I scampered around Cape Cod exploring, eating and shopping.
Three days later I was off to Michigan to meet up with my Aunt Debbie and my mom and brother Matt. We met up in Traverse City and drove to Central Lake to stay with my grandfather who, up until then, I had never met. I also met his wife and my aunt Lisa and little cousins Brandon and Hailey. We had such a blast!
During that trip the four of us (mom, aunt, brother, me) drove to Muskegon and a couple other places meeting my great aunt and uncle Frieda and Bud, then my Great Grandmother's identical twin Vida. Then a my great aunt Vivian. Such vibrant youthful people you never met! Michigan was as beautiful as people say. I saw my first silver poplar tree too. Uncle Bud showed us his substantial garden and taught us how to harvest seeds from flowers.
Fall is just now setting in here in Boston. The trees are vibrant shades of gold, crimson, fire and several shades in between. There are mountains of leaves on lawns and they are swirling thru the air with every puff of wind that happens by.
Mikeala O'Brien and Stacy Collins are here visting from good ol' CA. We are having a blast and staying up late into the night laughing and talking...as usual, take a wild guess who is feeling old and tired? Why, ME of course. But we are really having much too much fun to complain. Feels just like the slumber parties from my single days....passing around pints of Ben & Jerry's and watching movies.
Let's see...what else is new these days....
Richie and I are coming up on our Second Anniversary next month. With all the traveling lately, we are staying on the homefront to celebrate it this year. I think he is having way too much fun driving around his new pickup to complain anyhow. It's a great little truck too...a four cylander (sp?) nissan frontier, silvery gold.
I'm still working for what used to be GTE-I but is now called Genuity. Still waiting for my stock to be worth something. Any day now would be nice.
I'm even more into Scrapbooking these days. I haven't seen the top of our dining room table in almost a year I think. (That's scrapbooking headquarters.) My fabulous hubby gave me my anniversary present early this year -- a Xyron 1200 machine. A scrapbooker's dream come true! If anyone is wondering what this fabulous little machine does, ask me. I'm totally raving about it.
Okay....enough updates for now....Gotta get moving and load some more pictures. This time I swear I will try to only add small ones so that they don't take years to upload. (sorry guys)
Onwards and Upwards!
-Sondi
Hi there! After returning from Rome on Sunday, we developed our 10 rolls of film and I scanned some of the pictures in today at work. I believe that I will update this journal a bit regarding our trip another time.
I wanted to add in two pictures of a few of my dear friends, Wendy & Liam and Chris & Jim.
I will also be adding in a link to two new pages of pictures of our trip to Rome, depending how busy it gets today at work.
In about four days, my sister Sha-sha will be arriving from CA for a visit. The following day is the memorial and the month is still chugging right along at breakneck speed. Man, am I tired.
-Sondi
Well, it's the year 2000 and so far, all those harbingers of doom were incorrect. Nothing blew up. No nuclear reactors melted and, as far as we can tell, no one has poisoned the water supply yet. My computer didn't even smoke one little bit! (What a bummer) So here's the latest news with me...
Not too much, sad to say. The weather is the most interesting thing going....After 304 days in a row with no snow, we are now undergoing quite the snow storm. The traffic is terrible and since the storm hit a few hours earlier than anticipated, in many towns, the roads weren't salted or plowed so commuting was dangerous. Except for one near miss with a truck on the way in when i hit a patch of ice in my employer's driveway (their fault entirely), I made it into work with only a crushed hubcab. Yeah, yeah, I know I'm from California but I really WAS careful. The same thing happened to other people who work here that AREN'T from CA so I don't feel too guilty about it. It was just a little frightening....sliding those ten or twelve feet with no control. I must say, bumper cars at Great America was WAY more fun.
Anyhoo....I still haven't used my darkroom, as well-equipped as it is. Come to think of it, I haven't even cracked open my bread-maker cookbook either, despite the fact that the maker has been sitting there on my kitchen counter for months. How embarrassing.
Well, what can I say, I've been busy. I finished my wedding scrapbook, which is a feat in itself. One drawer of pictures down, two more to go. I finished writing my talk for tonight. Unfortunately, it focuses on Sisera instead of one of my favorite bible characters, Jael, who weilds that tent pin and hammer. Hopefully it goes over well. Hopefully they don't cancel the meeting tonight due to road conditions. They had better not, i'm really looking forward to this talk....
I've made a tiny bit of progress towards my goal of learning Italian. I bought a daily desk calender which features a word/phrase in Italian each day. A cassette lesson and English-to-Italian dictionary are in the mail on their way to me...So that should help a little too. Now if this old dog could just LEARN the new tricks, we'd be in business!
Hmm...what else....I ordered some new glasses (exciting, eh?). I attempted to take the pictures I scanned in off my computer at home. Didn't work. The program I'm using to view the pictures is too big for my tiny PC and it doesn't have enough memory to alter the scanned images. And of course, they are too big to load onto discs. Sooo...who knows when they will show up here on my site. ...not too much else to report..... So I'll stop there.
Happy Winter To all!!
Sondi
Well, we're back from our anniversary trip to Vermont, celebrating the big O 1 !!! We spent the long weekend in Waterbury, Vermont (yes, home of Ben & Jerry's). We explored the country's smallest capital city, Mt. Pelier, and Stowe as well. Very picturesque little towns. We explored the used books stores and various little shops here and there. Lots of crafts shops.
We even went to a restaurant called the Sirloin Saloon where they served some really interesting stuff. They offered Bison, Elk, Quail....and of course beef, pork and chicken. For novelty's sake I tried the Bison. It was....ah....interesting. It was a bit tough. Tasted like a cheap cut of steak actually. Who knows. It may have been for all I know. But it was served with an amazing Bernaise (sp?) sause. Not too shabby.
Anyhow....the day after we came back, I was bumming around Boston with my friend Beth, sipping Starbucks on Boylston street, when who should we see but Lauren Bacall coming out of the Ritz Carlton and doing some shopping. We always wondered who shopped in those Tre' Chic (i.e. outrageously priced) shops on Boylston Street. Well, now I know.
Well, we're closing in on the finish of our FIRST year of married life. In ten days we'll have made it through the year officially. We're celebrating by going back to Vermont and spending the weekend in the same B & B we went to for our honeymoon. Should be fun. It's the same town that Ben & Jerry have their ice cream factory. How can we go wrong???
Not too much new with me besides all that. I updated (accidentally) the picture on my main page with a characture (sp?) that was drawn yesterday at our employee appreciation day. The theme of the day was "GTEI - A Great Place To Work". And of course, considering that they plied us with ice cream, hot fudge, nuts (the works) and free drinks, popcorn and funny pictures of ourselves and workmates, I pretty good time was had by all. A buddy of mine at work scanned my funny picture in for me and, like a dope, I saved it with the same filename as my existing picture and Voile'!, it was replaced. Arrggh....Somedays I hate computers.
If anyone has any quotes for me to add to my newly introduced quote pages, please email them to me at: Sondigirl2@hotmail.com. Gotta run for now.....have some actual work to do here at work. Write me!
-Sondi C
Well, this being Monday Morning, I'm here at work...eh..."working". (Yeah, yeah, that's the ticket..."working")
The normal everyday things are going on....working, service, four hour drives to New York to visit the in-laws. You know, the normal stuff. I spent a total of eleven hours in the car over the weekend. I can't believe how sore a person can get doing absolutely nothing in a car. We drove to and from New York and made two trips to New Jersey. Sore butt, sore butt....
I started a new job here in the GTE- Internet Help Desk. I love it because I have a better schedule and can now actually eat dinner before the meetings ...so my stomach is definitely pleased with my job choice as well.
The most interesting East Coast thing that's happened to be recently I would have to say is going apple picking. It was my first official New England apple picking experience. Fresh juicy plucked-from-tree apples are the best! And the pies... ....ahhh...unbelievable taste sensation! I used my mom's apple jack recipe...it was hit! Thanks, mom
Please please please though....Email me! I'm always checking my mail...Tell me how you are! What's new with YOU???
Till next time.....
-Sondi Caserio
