A Birthday and 34 Things | #25-34

This post is part of a series of 34 Things I Want My Daughters to Know About Me. You can see my additional things here: An Anniversary and #1-4 | #5-14 | #15-24
 

Today would have been my Mom’s 60th birthday and is also the anniversary of the day she was buried. The weather outside this morning, rainy and windy, was a reflection of my mood, but only for a brief moment. On days like these I am melancholy in the morning. I can’t help it. I am sad, and sometimes full of tears, that my Mom is not here with us to celebrate this milestone birthday. But I share with my husband and with my six year old what day it is and how I’m feeling and their comfort, encouragement and hugs bring a smile to my face.

It is fitting that my final 34 Things entry falls on this day. For me, days like these, while filled with emotion, will forever be a reminder of why memory keeping is so important. I smile because I know that by sharing stories through photography, scrapbooking, and even this blog, when my 60th Birthday rolls around my daughters will have a full picture of who their mother was. They will know the story behind that favorite picture of me in my youth and will have a beautiful record of my growing up story and of theirs.

For these past few weeks, in loving memory of my Mom, I have been participating in 34 Things with Jennifer Wilson at Simple Scrapper. You can see my original post here. I’ve shared 34 Things I want my daughters to know about me. I’m so grateful that this list of 34 Things is the start of a long list of stories about myself I can share with my daughters. I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have.

Here are my last few entries:

25. I went to Europe with two great friends in late fall 2006. The weather was supposed to be miserably cold and it was a bit cold but not enough to dampen the trip of a lifetime. My favorite memory of that trip is dragging my friends to the top of the Eiffel Tower one night. It was freezing but the view of the city from the top was magical.

26. This is my favorite picture of my brother, Alex, and I. It looks like I’m having so much fun having a 15-month-old baby brother around that Christmas.

27. Grandparents Day in elementary school was one of my favorite days of the year. My grandma never missed it and we got to leave school early and go out for lunch.

28. My group of friends in high school got nicknamed the Pink Ladies after we dressed up as the characters from Grease one Halloween. I love these girls. We had the BEST Christmas get togethers and the tradition continues today and hopefully for many more years to come.

29. I have the Kika look and you probably will too. The way our eyebrows come down and our  mouths pout just a little when we’re upset is inherited from and named for your Great-Grandma Kika.

30. I often spent one week at Tia Martha’s house during Christmas break. She would take all of us younger cousins to all the amusement parks around Southern California and to other interesting places. We made gingerbread houses and went Christmas Caroling around her neighborhood. I looked forward to that visit every year.

31. I love weddings! Ever since I was little I remember having so much fun at these huge parties, even though I always cry during the ceremony (even as a kid). Your Dad and I went to a lot of weddings together while we were dating, and yup they still are lot of fun.

32. In Jr High the first time I ever plucked my eyebrows myself I made them WAY too thin. Beware of tweezers!

33. I was baptized at the 200-year-old Mission San Luis Obispo in the city where I was born. The priest looks like he was quite a hippy.

34. I don’t have a lot of pictures of my Mom and I together as adults. I wish I had more. I will be sure to always have lots of pictures of our family together.

 

So that’s it. Or at least the start of it. There are of course a million and one things I want to share with my daughters but this was a great way to get those ideas flowing and a great way to share with you all the importance of telling our own stories.

Before Your Story started yesterday at Big Picture Classes. Jennifer shared a sneak peek of the classroom area and an unboxing video that you can view here. I stayed up too late last night going through the week one materials. Jennifer has a great way of making big projects like these way more manageable. If I can keep up and follow her instructions I know that at the end of this class I’ll have a gorgeous albums of my own stories all ready for my daughters in time for Mother’s Day. What a great gift to myself and to them.

Do you have any big stories you want to document? Your own growing up story? Maybe a big vacation? Let us know in the comments.