idiosyncrasies and old photos

the captain, i mean kelly, tagged me for the idiosyncrasies meme. here are my five:
1. i always blow on a fork or spoonful of food to cool it off, even if its cold. i catch myself doing this with ice cream the most. i think its the steam.
2. i catch myself unbelting, unbuckling, unbuttoning my whatever as i am heading to the bathroom, i even do it a work every now and then without thinking.
3. i love getting into a freshly made bed with clean sheets. i try to pull down the sheet as little as possible and slip in. so when david comes in and rips the sheets all the way down to the bottom of the bed, i get pretty angry.
4. i have an extra helping of elbow. by that i mean they are really long. im always bumping them into doorways or hitting david with them. they are so bad that i cant really wear anything long-sleeved twice because i bag out the elbows! but they are pretty handy for turning on the lights when my hands are full, or opening the fridge.
5. i pretty much cant stand hair. mine doesnt bother me so much, as long as it is still attached to my head. but stray hairs on anything totally gross me out and sometimes make me gag a little. i especially dont like playing with anyone elses hair. the only exception to this being my kids, and because it is still new and usually clean, im not so sure once they get to be big kids. hair! gross... this carries over to animal fur and ever so slightly to feathers. gross.

so there they are, my idiosyncrasies. i guess by definition they make me, me! i am going to tag the few men i know who are out there blogging, those being; david, chris, mike, and john. also because i know they secretly check out craft blogs from time to time. and my friend kristen, because i am so interested in what she has to say.

on to the old photos. went to my parents house last night for dinner. afterwards we were talking and my mom mentioned that her uncle sent her two cds full of pictures of our family in colombia. my mom is from bogota (forgive the lack of an accent mark mom, i dont know how to put it there), colombia. all of her family (and it is big believe me, waaaay extended) is still there except for one brother and one sister who live close by in kc. i borrowed them so i could burn copies for myself. looking through them today made me very nostalgic. i really hope to take my own family to visit one day. for now it is too expensive and not the best place to be. i miss my other aunt and all my cousins. i have so many fond memories from summers spent there. i have been four times, the last time was in 92. we used to spend three months at my grandparents house, leave as soon as school got out for the summer and come back a few weeks before classes started again. when i was four my mom and my brother, he was just one at the time, went for six or seven months. from one fall to the next summer. i distinctly remember lighting sparklers outside on christmas night. my dad and american grandmother came to stay with us the last month or so before we came back home. the story goes that when my dad arrived to the house from the airport he came over to me and began speaking english. i gave him a funny look and asked my mom what he was saying because i had forgotten english! fast forward twelve years to my first kiss which was from a street kid, my mom got a kick out of that one. anyway, all of this rambling to say that there were a few old black and white photos of my great grandmother, my grandparents and my mom and aunts and uncles. so great. i love looking at these old photographs.

this is my favorite. this is a picture of my grandfather enrique with my great grandmother ester. i think he is around 12 years old. i was fortunate to spend quite a bit of time with my great grandmother, and could that lady sew! she used to make all of my mothers clothes. my mom said that she and her sisters would go to the store with her, look at all the clothes they wanted, and then my great grandmother would come home and make them. just like that. so amazing. i also was fortunate enough to get a box of knitted baby clothes that she had made for her children and passed along down the line to me!

i love this one too. from left to right is: my moms cousin claudia, my mom, my grandmother, my uncle daniel, my aunt marta, and some girl i dont know. look at that grin on my moms face. from what im told, she was pretty ornery. i think i inherited quite a bit of that. and daniels slicked back hair, so cool.

i cant hardly get over how awesome this picture is. this is my papa enrique (thats what we call him) and his cousin, my moms godmother teresita. i love this picture, cant you just hear the music playing in the background? so dapper. really how many men today are flat out dapper? not too many.

this might be hard to believe but this is a picture from my parents wedding. they got married in bogota. lets see if i can pick out some of these people. well the guy in the bell-bottomed suit on the left is my dad, he is talking to my great grandmother. my mom is the one with flowers in her hair. you cant tell from this picture but her wedding outfit was a one piece, bell-bottomed white jump suit. it has little pearl buttons that go all the way down the front. so cool. the little girl to the left is my moms youngest sister, my aunt adriana, and thats my uncle daniel again in another rockin bell-bottomed suit. tons of other extended family in this picture. i love these old pictures so much! i am going to try to get my hands on as many of them as i can! and i promise david to start speaking spanish again. i know i say this all the time, but we are doing it this time!