mammoo

i love this picture of the sweet little girl... this is my great-grandmother, margaret ball petty - my nana's mom.

my grandma and grandpa

these are my mom's parents. some, probably most of you know that they were both blind from an early age. they met in the 4th grade and it was love at first 'sight' for my grandpa. my grandma played hard to get and made my grandpa finish college, law school at notre dame, and establish his law practice with his brother before she would agree to marry him!



this picture was taken on grandma's family's farm in the 1930s!


this is my grandma and grandpa in their earlier years with one of their seeing eye dogs. not sure which one this is or when this pic was taken - he has many dogs over the years and his early dogs were always german shepherds.


here is gma and gpa a year or so my grandma died. they were in their mid 80s here and sitting in our backyard in houston. i love that they still held hands well after being married for almost 60 years!

me and my cuz

this is my cousin caitlin (some of you have met her!)! this pic is from almost 11 years ago at my brother's high school graduation. he was the class of 2000. so i was 21 and caitlin was 11 here.

my mamma

i love this sweet photo of my mamma and her mamma...




mom was about 17 here.


and this is when she was in college.

and it's allllllll about meeeee!

this was daddy reading me a story. he was so good at that! even as a little kid i was a voracious reader... one more story daddy!


i have pigtails! and bows! and i used to love this cardigan.


anyone else have one of these?! kind of like my own personal teacup... i loved that thing!!! i'd sit on that for hours. or at least minutes!!


my new baby brother! where'd this thing come from and can he go back now?!


this is me in an awesome snowsuit - i think it was marketed as: never lose your kid in the snow with this one! and that was our cat, pounce. this was our front yard in north carolina before my parents moved to houston.


and this was me and my friend lisa. i'm the bean pole on the left with a missing front tooth!

it all started in 1952.

this was my dad's first birthday: jan 3, 1953.


my dad is the smaller one and his twin on the right is his older brother, chuck.


i have no idea why, but my dad has a parasol and he seems quite happy about it!


this is chuck, my dad, and their little sister, ellen in front of the house they grew up in. i am loving the smirk on chuck's face and the red coat and skinny lack bow tie on my dad!



and here are the 3 of them a little older. please check out chuck's stache and hair!!! omg, awesomeness!!!! from the date on the picture, this was july 1970.


but of course my dad had to compete for the awesome hair title as well - not sure the year here, but i'm guessing this must have been around the early 70s. thankfully he did not do the porn star 'stache...at least not that i know of or have seen in any pictures!!!

nana and gdad.

tired of the family photos yet?! too bad... the rest of the month is old fam photo fun!!



this was taken in houston - probably early 80s.


this one cracked me up!!! it was just kinda out of character for them to do! and i find it really funny.


this is my nana and grandaddy with my nana's dad - fred petty. this was taken in front of the house nana grew up in in muncie, in.


weren't they super stylish?!

andy is such a cutie pie!

ok, so he hates being called andy. and has since he was basically old enough to say so. he was quite adamant about this and so he quit being andy and has been andrew ever since. i used to call him andy just to annoy him when we were younger. oh heck, i probably still do!



my mom loves to say how andy got this tractor: it for taking a poo poo in the potty. yep, it was a dump present! i asked what i got. she said... ummmm, probably nothing?! but how cute is this little superman!?


andy used to love to imitate daddy and back in the day, dad used to mow the lawn. and so andy would mow the lawn right alongside dad - both of them usually wearing their matching 'brown' t-shirts. pretty sure my brother wouldn't know what a lawnmower looked like now... doubt he's touched one since he was about 3!


check him out: no hands!!


and here's another cowboy!!! yep, we still have that horsey.

embarrassment?! nah!!!

happy birthday to me!! today i am 32... and this picture was taken just about 29 years ago! wow. in any case, mom says she took this one so she could embarrass us later in life. embarrass me?! heck no - check out that tan ladies!!! and that's a pretty darn cute face if i do say so myself! so there, on my 32nd birthday, i give you: me! in a bathtub! with my little brother!

my nana

and now for a few of my beloved nana (dad's mom). she died when i was 14 and in the summer right before high school. both my parents and my aunt learned of her death via answering machine thanks to my sweetheart of a grandad! i just recently learned that... as in when i was in ca visiting my aunt and uncle. how uncool!! anyways... here is my elegant and beautiful nana...

i don't know where this was taken or who was cut out of the picture, but i like this picture - and funny enough i still have the belt and the purse in this shot! her waist was rather small, so it can't actually be worn, but that's ok!


here's my nana when she was a girl. i am in love with this picture - and the bow in her hair!

and here's an older nana with me (in glasses again - yuck!!) and my brother in our house in houston. in this pic, she's wearing my favorite shirt of hers - she wore it a lot - i called it her lollypop shirt though i'm pretty sure they were really little tulips all over it... in any case, we still have this shirt somewhere too... we're pretty sentimental folk...


i mean, could this outfit be any more awesome?! dang, i wish i had that - i'd totally rock it (if i could fit it - she was tall, but tiny!) to a theme party!

and this is the 4 generations shot: my nana, mamoo (her mom), me and my momma.
and one last photo of my nana... it's a great picture of her, but i am coveting the handbag in the background - it's a gucci. it's definitely not something that is still in our family or it would already be in my closet!!!! gosh, i'd do a lot of things to get my hands on that bag!

and it's 80s time!

and here is a tribute to mom, dad, me and my brother in the 80s!

on the stairs in maine. check out those awesome glasses of mine!

me and my dad in front of the house in maine. look how strong he was!

this is me and my momma obviously during christmas time hence the tree in the background. i particularly love my mom's glasses (she hates them!) and the laugh on my face. i would have been almost 3.

and here's my dad, me and my brother in florida. i'm guessing this was about 4th or 5th grade. you know, when 'plastic' shorts were all the rage!

in the 80s.

when my nana was alive, we'd do big family gatherings. this was in fl and must have been christmas time since there are so many toys out and about. my grandad is in the back reading his paper, my brother is the boy in front, my cousin adam is behind him, i'm in the glasses (yuck!), and that's my uncle chuck and his kiddo, matt.

here i am in houston - my dad is on the other side and boy did i love seesawing with my dad. this was in oct 81 - right before my baby brother made his debut. i personally love the socks and sandals look!

old timey.

this is my great-grandmother, katherine, with her mother, effie reed stevens in the middle, and her brother, george on the other side. these people were my dad's dad's mother, grandmother, and uncle. i love the old timey outfits.

here is my grandad with his father. my dad called his grandpa, bapa. in real life this is henry miller harper jr and sr in their war uniforms: my gdad in wwII and bapa in wwI.

bapa was super interested in history and family stuff and took hundreds of pictures which for the time was quite impressive. he also clipped all newspapers that made a mention of anyone in his family. i never met him, but he must have been a super proud, sentimental man. it's so neat to see all this saved family history!

dec 26th, 1944.

i'd always heard that my grandad had spent his 21st birthday in the train station of florence during the War. he never talked about his experience over there - though we know he marched all over italy. well, in one of the boxes, we found this picture - it was written on as dec 26th, 1944 - which would have been 4 days after his 21st birthday. i never ever saw him with a mustache, but here he is sporting one. it makes me wonder who took this picture... and since he was less than sentimental about stuff, how did it survive and makes its way all the way to IN?? maybe he mailed it to his parents... i dunno, but it feels very poignant to me to see him at 21, in the middle of war - i can't imagine what he saw over there and i doubt any of us would want to.

me and my newborn little brother. guess i lied when i said i'd never held a brand new baby until piper! here's the proof. please someone comment on the awesome couch!!

me and the little brother a few years later. it's hard to see, but he has on my shoes, i have on my mom's shoes. he's pushing a box in the pink stroller while i push a dolly in a grocery cart. and there's that couch in the background!!

the grandad.

this is my grandad with his mother, katherine stevens - my namesake. he was born in 1923, so i'd guess this was around 1925.

nana and her boys

this is a picture that appeared in the newspaper (my nana and dad's family were often in the paper - small town & nana had a friend who wrote for the paper).

the little boy on the left with the shovel and pail (hard to see) is my dad! and the one on the right is my uncle chuck (who lives in chicago). and that is my nana - wasn't she gorgeous and glamorous?! this would have been around 1957ish i'd guess - and it was taken in naples, fl. i love the stylish matching outfits and the sunglasses!!

january is for family

my mom and i worked super duper hard on exchanging all ugly old frames of family members that had been on the walls for years with new better looking updated frames. since we have a long hallway in the newly remodeled house, we decided to do better looking frames and artfully hang them up. sounds easy, right?! yeah, if you count endless trips to aaron brothers, hours switching out the frames, more hours laying out the design for the wall, and then directing dad how to hang them all up! and that's just part of it! it was a lot of fun. it even included a trip to the storage unit to go through old boxes where we found new (old) pictures for frames, old newspaper clippings and other fun family artifacts. and then we scanned in the photos and reprinted them so the originals would have back ups. anyways, this long explanation is leading up to: family month. i'm going to do a bunch of posts of the photos we uploaded. i hope you guys enjoy!


me. circa 1981 -ish. i'm a coooooowgirl, baby!!


me and my superman brother. this would have been halloween 1982 - andy as he was known then had just turned 1.