Great visit to see Mom! On her 96th birthday!

That's Mom and my S-I-L Lynnie sitting on the back porch of the nice brick house on Mt. Savage Road, that's been home to the Kelly family for over 50 years, and set in the little town of Frostburg, Maryland. It was a warm afternoon and there was a beautiful mountain breeze coming down the hill behind the house, working its way through the tall pines and down to the rhododendron bushes lining the far back of the property. It passed the numerous tuberous begonias set out in pots along the old stone wall, now over 100 years old. Mom has always loved her begonias and has grown them every year as long as I can remember! Now, the sun had given up it's daily effort to heat up the area and had grown soft and sweet. We all had scrubbed up and gotten pretty in anticipation of going to diner at the best Italian restaurant in town as a proper celebration of Mom's 96th birthday. It was a nice moment.

It was like that all the long weekend. Fun family time and us busy making memories.

I'll share the genealogy parts of the days with you in future blog posts. There's a lot, and I have jet lag so I'll just take it slow and steady. Let's start with the trip to the church office to see baptism, marriage, and burial records from the 1850s forward. Handwritten and some in Latin. Oh, my!

Then on to an old church across the Potomac River from where the ancestors lived. That was fun even thought we didn't find what we were looking for. Too bad, but that's genealogy for ya.

And last, the big dig into Mom's files and books. I'm real conflicted about that and I'll share my feelings with you.

Black bears had visited the side yard feasting at the old apple tree out on the edge of the property. Lynnie thought it was a mother and a cub, or maybe two cubs. And a mother deer and three fawns grazed in the yard too. She sat down for a rest in the soft sun and watched her offspring as the sun was setting. One of the fawns was full of energy and bounced around in the tall grass.

On Tuesday, I finally left. Cried. So sad at leaving Mom once again. You know what I'm talking about.

More later.


The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2014/07/great-visit-to-see-mom-on-her-96th.html