Saturday's Old Photo

This is a photo of my youngest daughter on her second birthday. She’s licking her chops in anticipation of her presents and cake.

She was a sweet little girl, but she also knew how to get what she wanted. She already had her daddy wrapped around her finger. She’s probably hoping her gifts are things that her big sister and brother will want to play with so she can tell them, “No, they’re my birthday presents!”

This coming week she turns 25. She’ll be flying off to Vancouver to spend the day with her big sister. That’s an impressive way to celebrate, but I bet she won’t have as much fun as she did on her second birthday.

Saturday's Old Photo

From my oldest son during last Sunday’s dinner (and he was serious): “When I go some place where there are kids, they always seem to gravitate toward me. I don’t know why; I don’t have any experience with children.”

This photo was taken during our trip down the Alaska highway in 1990. Oldest son would be 11 years old and his baby brother 7 months or so.

We’re still looking fairly clean and mostly happy, so this must be the first day of travel. The door to the travel trailer is open and I’m probably in there making a pot of coffee and fixing lunch or supper.

I miss those road trips with the whole family including the pets.

Saturday's Old Photo

This photo was taken before the one in last week’s old photo. The text on the back, written by my mother, says

Thelma [my mother] and some Navajo girls she taught at Intermountain Indian School, Brigham City, Utah in 195?

I don’t know much more. I do know that during the early fifties, my mother lived in Salt Lake City with her sister and worked as a legal secretary. Brigham City is sixty miles from Salt Lake, so perhaps this is a vacation Bible school class or a weekly Bible class she taught.

According to the Wikipedia article I found, Intermountain Indian School was a boarding school for Navajo children. (You can see a photo of the now abandoned dormitories here.) Why there would be such young tykes as those two in front, I don’t know. If my mother were still here, I’d ask her.

I have a round leather red, orange, and white beaded medallion that my mother was given while she worked with Navajo children. I wore it tied around my pony tail as a child, and recently I tied it to my purse as decoration, until I decided I ought to be more careful with it. Now it’s sitting on a dresser in the dining room waiting for me to decide what to do with it next. One thing I won’t do is put it away where I can’t see it. Things with history are too interesting for that.