A Blog Full of Memories!

Gentes e Lugares de Penalva do Castelo/

Deja vu! The blog above created by an old friend from my hometown and still living there, is worth to be viewed by all! It consists of old photos shared by many, full of memories. Some people are well known to me, still familiar from my childhood days, others are family members. Many are deceased, and this blog is worth millions, priceless to all of us who can relate to, and who are from the beautiful town of Penalva do Castelo, Portugal and our birthplace. This blog is about people and places we will never forget or erase from our memories. These photos kept in great shapes by many and now shared for us to see. We enjoy looking at these photos and read their journal entry with my mother, as she still remembers who these people are at the age of 83. It is always with love and caress, and some strong emotions that we share with her, and she shares with us their stories, by telling us over and over again their beginnings and their journeys, which are still engraved in her mind.

Happy Easter Weekend!

Happy Easter! Happy Spring!

Wishing all my non-facebook friends but blog readers, a Very Happy and Holy Easter Weekend! Wishing that you all would be on facebook with me, but I know how you feel about it and respect it somehow! Although I think you have the wrong perception. Facebook is wonderful and a good social way to intermingle and share with all our loved ones, especially during these holidays. I know some people abuse it, but I guarantee you that they are not on my list, and only selected friends are accepted in my network. Perhaps someday I will see you there. For now, I hope you continue reading my blog, and maybe you can share some good comments here as well. Just leave a message or something, so I know you stopped by. I hope you are having a great Holy Easter Weekend, filled with love and traditions carried down in your families. Enjoy the good food that you are preparing with so much caring and abundance, and the religious services which come with the Easter Holiday. And if you have been invited to someone's home for Easter Sunday dinner, don't forget to ask what you can bring along, and to say thank you for the consideration. Above all, thank the Lord, for all He has been providing us all the days of our lives. Happy Easter Everyone! And even though the weather here in US has not been cooperating, raining as we speak, I wish you a Very Happy Spring as well! Enjoy...♥

Easter Traditions.

It's Saturday night, Palm Sunday Eve. While preparing for tomorrow's birthday dinner for EJ, my oldest grandson, many thoughts have crossed my mind today, reminiscing about Easter traditions which passed from generation to generation in my family. They have changed as time went by, and they are still changing, due to various factors including changes in culture, language, and the decade itself in which we live in with our children and their children born in a different place from ours. I still can smell the palms, the scented flowers we carried to the church on Palm Sunday with our Grandmother. I remember how busy the week before Easter was, when our mother, aunts, cleaned their houses throughly, cooked and baked for the perfect Easter Sunday dinner at Grandmother's house. It used to be a large banquet table dressed with a new cloth embroidered tablecloth, well decorated and  filled with special dinner, served in special china plate settings, cakes, pies and puddings. The village priest would come on Easter Monday to bless the house with the cross of Christ, and again the table would be filled with desserts, the traditional almonds, and a certain sweet liquer served in special glasses. I many times wondered as a kid, how could the priest try all these cakes, and drink all this liquer by visiting every single house in the village. It was fun for me, my sisters and my friends to follow the priest and his assistants through all the streets and stop at every family home, to try a new different pastry. Later when we moved to US, and adapting to the new country, became a necessity of survival and financial independence for my parents, we had to filter within us the new customs and traditions of the new land, and merge them with our native ones. My mother would continue to prepare a nice dinner in the same manner she always did in the old country, and cook the traditional food for every specific holiday. She would with our help as teenagers maintain the house cleaned and decorated accordingly. At the same time, and subconsciously we would integrate the new traditions from the new adopted country when we live in now. However, that Sunday routine to the church on Sundays, wasn't as frequent as when Grandmother was alive. We have followed our catholic religion and remember deeply our roots, and try to live by them, but the practicing of it, has been unfortunately minimal. I remember the candle processions and the vigils at our church, and I miss them so much. I was brought up in a catholic school, and then it was our life, our way.

About 43 years later, my sisters and I are doing the same thing, alternating and trying to celebrate these holidays with love and the way we have always remembered them, while allowing our descendants to bring in some of their own. So far it has been a good mixture of things, of accepting new offers and providing old tastes to everyone. Our tables get decorated as well, but not only with the old traditional multi colored almonds for Easter, but also with chocolate eggs. We have welcomed the american way belonging to our younger generation, but we are still showing them how it used to be done by presenting food items we make ourselves or buy in the local Portuguese food markets. Our children and their own children know they will always be raised and grow up in a variety of  holiday traditions to be cherished by all! And I know they are creating their own memories, whether it is a Easter Egg Hunt on Easter Sunday, decorating them, or going to their own church with their Mom and Dad on Palm Sunday and smell their own scented palms. Even though we always lived in the Portuguese community here in US, where candle processions still take place at Easter Time, and churches offer the same services, sadly to say I don't practice it the way I always did as a kid, but respect it by always remembering it with my Grandmother in my mind.

This year I am celebrating Palm Sunday by integrating my grandson's birthday and having some family over at my house, including my mother who continuously reminds us of her own holidays at her mother's house. She gets so focused in that time, she practically forgets to talk about the holidays she spent with us decades later. I think she firmly believes that we are the ones who must talk about those holidays with our own children.  My dinner may be different from my grandmother's or even my mother's, but the table with be decorated with a dual culture and tradition, and everyone will savour it and wish EJ a very nice birthday. I am sure my daughter will always remember our family holidays but being second generation in US, it won't be as easy for her children to continue in the same way, as she married an american young man  from another heritage. It will be indeed interesting as time goes by, to witness combined multi traditions taking over, instead of just a single or a dual. It will be a much richer generation, a generation of many dreams, ideals, followers and brand new Holiday Traditions. For now...

Happy Palm Sunday! Happy Easter! ♥

Turning Ten ~~~~~~~~~~

EJ, when he was a baby and the only grandchild of mine.
And me, his proud Grandmother.
I have been his Vó for 10 years!

EJ here was 8 years old with Vó
at Spain Restaurant, Narragansett RI

~Where does time go? Where are the time clouds taking us? They gently carry us along the skies, one day at a time, one year after another! My oldest grandson is turning 10 years old today, Friday April 8, 2011. He was a baby just the other day and the only grandchild of mine. Today I have 2 more. Yes, EJ is turning 10, his sister Sydney turned 8 in March and their brother Justin will be 4 in October. That makes me an older person, right? Maybe, age wise. But not spirit wise. I am indeed much richer as they keep me alive, sane and looking always on the brighter side of things. When I am with them, life seems to go smoother. I can hear it whispering softly at me "Enjoy it, Savour it, Devine it". They grow so fast, the clouds in the sky also carry them away, one whisper at a time. We all fly together, as time demands, as time says so. The universe awaits for us, in its large magnitude of horizons and endless rainbows, at a distance so far, yet so close. It doesn't matter who is turning 10, 20, 30, 40, or 50. We all move in dimension, we all move along, towards the same gate at the end of one long road, where all will be perfectly clear, symbolic and celebratory! But today we are here, together living every day of our lives, doing what we can do best, congratulating each other, helping each other, loving and embracing each other. Life can be short, but the memories we all create, are long and forever foot printed in the same memory lane we all walk on, at so many different paces. One day is cold, next day is warm; one day we feel well, and the following day not so well! We hear the wind blow, we listen to the rain fall, we blink at the bright sun. Some days the sky has more clouds, the sea has more waves, the sun reflects more rays. Life is not always still, we all turn a number at one point or another and we celebrate with family and some good friends. We have fun, we live in harmony, we listen to great music, we turn accordingly to how the world turns. We are happy, we are sad, it's all part of who we are. Turning 10 is a good number, the beginning of a long, long countdown here on earth! A good time to start forming and encountering new friends, families from every generation, knowing who they are. Turning into the age of 10, means discoveries which may lead to not quite yet full dreams. Perhaps becoming a new member of the smart 5th graders' class, becoming an all star scholar and athlete, with the help and support of all those turning 20, 30, 40 and more, who we call Mom, Dad, Teacher, Coach. Turning 10 shouldn't by any means, mean anything else. It should always mean, turning around the road for the 10th time, of a good and long prosperous life, with respect, love, with whom we share and where the heart always is ♥ Turning 10, simple means that you are no longer 9, but you are still a kid.♥ A turning point from a single digit to a double digit! Enjoy your tenth!

And here is the 10th year old EJ having his favorite
 ice cream cake! 

What a handsome hockey player!

Happy 10th Birthday EJ! Be happy, don't worry! 

10 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Hearts, my gift to you. Thank you for being a perfect grandson! Love you much!♥
Vó.

Beginning his 10th birthday with Lacrosse.
He can't say his parents deprived him from trying new sports.
And he is still ranks top of his class academically!

Weekend in Coventry!

Click here to view these pictures larger

This was a winning weekend in soccer for Sydney too! 

Very proud of all my 3 champions, who I call my

Joy, Pride and Fun!

Finally ....U8A Division Champions!!!! Beating the reigning champs Warwick ...they gave a good battle though....This marks the end of indoor soccer... Hello spring soccer...here we come 1st game tomorrow
Look at Sydney in the back smiling!