The First Annual Cousins Party 2000
Saturday, August 25th, 2007
Our first annual cousins party was held on Saturday, June 17, 2000. The fact that it was only held annually for two years doesn’t detract from the excitement generated by our first soiree. My oldest Murphy cousin Cathy had recently held a generic party at her house in Dayton, one she had recently acquired and was anxious to show off. If memory serves me correct, it was during this party, which featured an ample number of cousins already, where the idea was generated to have a get-together exclusive to the Murphy cousins and their spouses and/or better-halves. So that was the genesis of the short-lived series. Thanks to Susan, here are some photos from the spectacle. Read the rest of this entry »
My Dad was obviously quite into baseball as he wandered through his pre-teen years. He had quite a vintage baseball card collection, which he still has today – and is probably quite valuable. He also fancied himself a ball player and sometime around 1960 these great photos of him playing baseball with his Dad were snapped. And as today is his 60th birthday, I thought it appropriate to share them. His parents obviously thought these pictures were keepers because they had them printed up in nice, glorious black and white 5 x 7 prints. 
It appears that we had two Thanksgiving celebrations in 1985. This particular year, Thanksgiving fell on Thursday, November 28 in 1985. This was less than two weeks after Grandpa Murphy’s 62nd birthday which is November 15. Not long before, he had undergone open-heart surgery. This is one of those holidays that would have surely been assigned to memory oblivion had we not had these nice family photos of the event. I speculate that we had an early Thanksgiving celebration combined with Grandpa’s birthday so that Darlene could celebrate with us. I’m betting that she and Bob were able to make it home from Denver during the early part of November, but not Thanksgiving, so we had an additional celebration for her benefit. This makes sense because Bob was released from the army on November 30 and likely had to be back in Colorado in order to complete his service exit paperwork. 
My memories of Denise’s birth are confined to just a few seconds of standing in Grandma and Grandpa Murphy’s family room, looking through the sliding glass patio doors at my parents pulling up in the driveway in our ’72 AMC Hornet, exiting the car, and carrying my new sister into their house. Obviously, this is where I was dropped off as my parents headed to the hospital. In addition, although I can’t remember it specifically, there is a great Super 8 film that my Dad took of my Mom and me getting out of the car and bringing Denise Anne into our Echo Hill front doors for the first time. This was taken on Tuesday, April 13.