In Grandma's Basement

I belong to a family of music lovers, and my Grandma Marge (who still puts on tight fitting jeans and goes out dancing) is no exception. She has a Jukebox in her basement that plays old 45's, and insists on the occasional impromptu dance party...call her a dancing queen, just don't call her old.

Belated

My belated birthday cake from my Grandma Marge was epic: it looked like a Swiss Cake Roll, and had ice cream in the middle. Nothing says Happy Birthday like Chocolate-chip-ice-cream-birthday-cake. Cheers to that!

Everyone Loves a Parade

Ah, the 4th of July. A time to spend with family, celebrating our country's independence. If you're from my family, you celebrate by getting up at 9 am, putting on an outfit of red, white and blue and driving to your Great-Grandmother's house in Niles, Illinois to watch the annual Niles Fourth of July Parade from her front lawn and then enjoy a classy afternoon of Boston Market catering and Bud Light. Here's Michael J. ("the J is for Jackson") Pierski setting up the obligatory red, white and blue lawn chairs for the parade.



The parade approaches...it always includes the marching bands, the clowns, the elected officials in shiny convertibles, the Shriners in their funny hats and bicycles, parade floats, and free candy and mini-American flags. We're Polish, so we love anything cheesy, like the parade, and anything free, like the candy and handouts.

My cousins are, by now, experts at this yearly parade stuff. They're saving their enthusiasm for the good stuff, the parade floats that throw out candy and cheap toys. If you look closely enough, you'll see that just about everyone's wearing the red, white and blue, and two of the girls are even sporting red-and-blue eyeshadow.


Everyone loves a parade...except if you're two years old, like my cousin Madelynn. She mostly preferred to check out the bugs in the grass.

The Kong is Back

New York or Gurnee, Illinois...King Kong does not discriminate between his choice tall objects-to-be-scaled.