A Blogging Milestone

This week is an anniversary for this blog and its companion. The first post to Home Stories appeared on Aug. 11, 2006 and the first entry on Thursday's Child is dated Aug. 15, 2006. So a year has passed, and I have learned that blogging requires some self discipline, energy and creativity that I don't always have. But I'll continue whenever something needs to be said.

August 15 is also the birth date of one of my great grandmothers, Paralee Belle Morgan Paris. She was born in 1864 and she died in 1962 at the age of 98. For all of the 19 years of my life to that point, she was old, forgetful and eventually an invalid, but stories about her younger days are intriguing. When she was barely 20, she married a tobacco farmer named Roscoe Paris, of whom her parents did not approve, in 1884. Evidence suggests an elopement. She apparently was a feminist before her time. When her younger daughter (my grandmother) was born in 1890, she told Roscoe "no more babies." Belle had been the oldest of 11 and she didn't want to be bedridden from childbearing like her mother. The family moved to Oklahoma Territory in 1903 and became part of the pioneer settler movement that created the 46th state. I have much more to write about her when I get the 4 Great Grandmothers project underway. For now, happy 143rd, grandma Belle!

What's with the numbers in the picture, you ask? Well, Norm and I were in the Missouri Botanical Garden gift shop a month or so ago and we purchased the lovely ceramic tile numerals and the frame to hold them as an early anniversary (or belated housewarming) present for ourselves. Six years after our move to this address, we decided to upgrade and personalize our house number. So now you know where we live.