Quince Blossoms are lovely and so was visiting Nana's House

Since my Mom brought up Nana Fern's house in her email and I had this picture (one of my favorites) handy, I thought I would post this today.

I am shy of 3 years old in this picture and although I don't have a memory of this particular day, I have great memories of Nana and Papa's House and spending time with Nana and Papa in Tillamook. In this picture I am helping Nana make pastry... maybe cookies, my favorite?

Anyone that knows Nana and Papa's house can see the steep staircase in the background leading up to the two small bedrooms and the attic space--and that was it, the whole upper floor. That attic space was great and so full of treasures. In August, 1972 when I was 9 and Cousin Kitty was just a little older, we were visiting Nana and having lots of fun playing at the school playground up the street. We weren't allowed to cross the much busier street to play at the park, which is actually much closer to their house.

We also loved playing in the yard. Nana always had beautiful multi color blooming ice plant ground cover growing in the planting space along the road. She had beautiful fuschia plants growing in the shade along the side of the house. To this day I still love both of those plants and always find a way to have flowers growing along the street of my house... In August you will see Zinnias at our house which also have bright colored blooms and hopefully make everyone feel welcome when they drive up.

Anyway, during that week long stay at Nana's house in August, 1972 Richard Nixon resigned from office. It was splashed all over the front page of the Oregonian and Nana tasked me and Kitty with putting away a copy in the attic with all her other treasures. So we climbed into the attic and found a fine spot for the newspaper, but when we went to leave the attic, we could not get the door to open. I don't remember being scared... we knocked and called for Nana for a bit, but then just spent a good deal of time exploring all the treasures of the attic. I don't know how much time passed, however, when Nana opened the door to the attic she didn't look very happy with us, so maybe quite a bit of time had passed.

That is the same trip to Nana's house where she taught me about properly rinsing conditioner out my hair and also Papa (in a very gruff way) showed me that you must tuck the shower curtain into the tub when taking a shower or the floor gets wet, very very wet. Maybe we didn't have a shower curtain at home, but I remember the look on Papa's face when he saw the very very wet floor of his bathroom after my shower. Maybe at home I only took baths, or maybe I just forgot, but you can bet, I never forget after that.

Nana Fern and Papa Nip will show up later in my section on Grandparents, but for now, that is it. Oh, I forgot, I have a great picture of Kim "Berly" Godsey Williams at the bottom of those same stairs as a toddler... I MUST go find that picture.... more later.