Author: nycrican2

Warning in a Dream

This blog is about a dream that I had many years ago. My two sons were ages, 6 and 1 at the time. I believe that the dream was a warning for me about a terrible event that was about to or could have occurred.

My husband was out of town when I had this dream. I was home alone with my two kids. In my dream, I was asleep in my own bed and bedroom. I awoke suddenly and found a guy I have never met standing by the side of my bed holding up a knife. He apparently was ready to stab me. I was so frightened in the dream that I woke up very scared and I was very happy it was only a dream.

I am usually a very deep sleeper and it takes a lot of noise to wake me up. However, because of this dream, I was sleeping very lightly for the next few nights. My bedroom faces the door of the entrance to my house from my two-car garage. This garage also has a side door in which you can enter the garage from my side yard.

Exactly two days after my dream at about 3:30 AM in the morning, I awoke up to the sound of the side garage door opening. I then heard footsteps. I immediately jumped off my bed, grabbed the handle of the door that faces my bedroom and yelled, “Whose there”? Usually I do not have a lot of courage but I was alone and I thought of protecting my children. The person got scared and I heard the person run out of my garage through my side garage door. I stood by the door that faces my bedroom for a minute because I was terrified. I however knew I had to get to the phone to call 911. I did not want to scream as to not wake up my children as I thought that if I did, they would never want to sleep in their rooms alone again.

I finally decided to go to my living room, got my phone and standing back by this door dialed 911. I stayed by this door holding the door handle until the police arrived. I did not trust the strength of this door handle because it was not very sturdy and I thought the person might be back. The police finally arrived, checked out my garage and found the side garage door wide open. The person was long gone. I quickly called my husband to let him know what happened and then my neighbors to warn them in case the person tried to enter their garages. I calmed down a bit after that and just laid down in my bed wide-awake until morning.

The next morning, my best friend called to see if my kids and I wanted to go to the beach with her and her daughter. It was summer time, my kids were not in school and I was off work for the summer as I teach. I said I would love to go and then quickly told her this story.

She got pretty excited and said, “oh my God, what time did the incident occur”. I said, 3:30 AM. She said that at that very moment, she had woken up really scared, woken up her husband and told him that she felt someone had just invaded the house of someone she knew and she thought it was her mom’s home. Her husband said, “honey, don’t be silly, just go back to sleep”. I stated that I thought it was amazing that she was able to sense that someone she knew was in danger. She said that this had never happened to her before.

Since then, I called a locksmith and had professional locks put on both doors. To this day, my kids still do not know what happened that night and I hope they never do until they are at least adults. I also hope they do not read this blog anytime soon.

Apple Software Update Woes and What I have Learned (Revised Blog)

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A few weekends ago, my youngest son’s Apple Power Macintosh G4 867 DP Mirrored drive Door Model # M8787LL/A computer crashed. The specs for this computer can be found on this site: http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g4/stats/powermac_g4_867_dp_mdd.html

He was running Mac OS Tiger version 10.4. 6. The OS somehow got corrupt and kept booting into single user mode and presenting the Darwin Command Line shell. If you have never seen it, it looks like this:

In this stage,the terminal would appear, cover the entire length of the monitor screen and it would present a black login command line window. When the user types in the login name and password, it seemed to start to boot normally but would promptly just come back to the same terminal. It seemed to be locked into an endless loop.

I thought I would be able to fix the situation quickly since I had previously installed AppleJack troubleshooting assistant software from: http://applejack.sourceforge.netwhich can be run in the Darwin command line window. Here is a screen shot of it:

I ran all of the tests shown on the screen shot. All worked correctly except it would not repair the disk successfully. At first, this led me to believe that my son’s hard drive was defective. However, since I teach Computer Programming, I know that error messages may not really mean what they state. A lot of times, a error message appears because it is the default and the program really doesn’t know what is wrong.

However, to double check, I quickly did a Google search on one of my other computers to find out which hard drive had originally shipped with the computer and found out it was an IBM 60 GB Ultra 7200rpm ATA/100 hard drive model # IC35L060AVVA07-0. I then did a search on this particular hard drive and found the shocking information found on this page about IBM hard drives: http://www.datarecovery24.co.uk/IBM%20IC35L060AVVA07-0.html Wow, what a eye opener. I guess this time, the error message was correct.

I quickly searched for a replacement hard drive and found a good alternative, I ordered a 80GB Western Digital Caviar 7200rpm UltraDMA 100/ATA drive for a very reasonable price. I used the video instructions shown on this site to install it: http://eshop.macsales.com/tech_center/index.cfm?page=Video/harddrive/g4mddata66/g4mddata66h.html I installed it as a secondary drive but made it the master drive. I left the original drive in the case and just pulled the cable off of it that connects it to the mother board.  Since the new drive is now the master drive, the original drive is now no longer recognized nor used by the system.

I decided to get my original OS OS Jaguar v10.2 G4 CD’s that came with the computer, put the cd in the DVD drive, held down the C key on the keyboard and started the install. I chose to install the original OS since it has some of my favorite apps that have been removed in Mac OS Tiger v10.4. 6. such as Iphoto and a few others. I then used Google to find instructions on how to update from this version to Tiger. I did so because there is another version of the Mac OS which is between these two and it is Mac OS X 10.3 Panther and I did not currently own it.

Found several pages that said to install Apple update fixes to Mac OS Jaguar v10.2 and that then I would be able to just skip the Mac OS X 10.3 Panther OS upgrade and just use my OS Tiger v10.4. 6 DVD to upgrade directly to it. They also stated that all I had to do was boot from my OS Tiger v10.4. 6 DVD to finish the upgrade. I followed these instructions which were unfortunately wrong.Everything crashed as soon as I tried to boot from the DVD and the computer started again in the Darwin Command line shell. The same situation happened again as in the beginning of this blog.

To make a long story short, this is what I learned about to completing the upgrade:

1. First boot from the Mac OS Jaguar v10.2 CD by holding down the C key on your keyboard. When you get the screen that states,”Welcome to the Mac OS System”. From the Installer Menu Bar, click Open Disk Utility. You will then see the Disk Utility window. Now complete the following instructions:

a. In the left pane of the Disk Utility window, click the drive you want to erase.

b. In the right pane of the Disk Utility window, click the Erase tab.

c. From the Volume Format drop-down menu, select Mac OS Extended.

d. In the Name field, highlight the existing text and type in a name for the hard drive and click on ERASE. Now quit the Disk Utility and then click on CONTINUE to start your Install.

2. After it gets done with the first CD, will ask you for the second Mac OS Jaguar v10.2 CD and it will finally boot. When it finishes booting. Remove the Mac OS Jaguar v10.2 CD from your DVD drive and insert your Mac OS Tiger version 10.4.6 DVD. You do need a DVD drive to do this.

3. The Tiger OS cd will start automatically and open a Window. Now click on INSTALL. You will get a message that it will require a restart and then start the install process. Click on ok.

4. After it finishes installing, your version will now be Mac OS Tiger version 10.4.6. You should now configure your internet connection and download the Mac OSX 10.4.11 PPC combo upgrade package from the Apple website.

5. Here are some do’s and don’ts:

a. Do not install any third party applications yet such as Firefox. Use Safari to download the upgrades. This is because third party applications may cause a conflict with the upgrade installs.

b. Do not use the automatic Apple Update utility to do this. It does not work well and may corrupt your OS system again. For example, if it is used to upgrade Java only, the next upgrade that contains the same version of Java will corrupt your OS system when you try to install it.

6. Instead go to http://support.apple.com/downloads/#MacOSXUpdCombo10.4.11PPC.pkg Download the 10.4.11 PPC Combo update package and run it. After running it, keep it handy as you will need it when you run into problems in the future.

7. At this point, you may want to go to the AppleJack site mentioned earlier in this article and download and install it.

8. When the computer restarts, then use Disk Utility, select your start up hard drive, click on the File Menu and hold down the option key. Click on Disable Journaling.
Now select your start-up hard drive and Repair Permissions. Now shut off the computer. You may like to restart it in single user mode by holding down the Option and S keys of your keyboard. When you get into the command line window, type in (paying attention to the upper and lower case words): applejack AUTO and hit the enter/return key. After it gets down running all of the tests, now restart the computer.

9. Now click on the Software Update from the apple menu on the top left side of your screen to install all Java related updates ending with Java for Mac OS, version 1.4 release 9 which can be found here: Java for Mac OS Version 1.4, release # 9.

Also install all security related updates. Once all the upgrades are done, now start installing third party applications if you like. Do not install Adobe Shockwave Player as I believe that one of the updates from Apple already includes it. Once you get done installing third party applications, repair the permissions again. If you get an error messages at any time, run the 10.4.11 PPC Combo update package again and again repair the hard drive permissions.

Your computer will now run efficiently and correctly. Hope this blog helps someone out there who may in the same situation.

Note: This blog was revised the day after I wrote it because I did further research and found out that the original hard drive was indeed defective.

Note: This blog was revised again on Dec. 18th, 2010 after I found new information to keep the computer running smoother.

Video Created for the Net Generation Education Project

This is an amazing video created as a keynote for the Net Generation Education Project

In a nutshell, students are asking today’s schools to stop the practice of blocking websites. They state this practice is preventing the future from being a part of their education.

I have to agree with these students 100%. I believe that educational institutions should teach students how to navigate the web safely instead of pretending that it does not exist.

Since the Internet has only been available to the public since 1994, most parents are not web savvy enough to teach their children cyber-safety skills. This means that if schools do not teach this, then students will have no choice to learn cyber-safety lessons the hard way.

As a nation, we cannot and should not let this happen. So, as these students state, lets start allowing our student’s futures into our educational institutions.

My Tweet and Picture were Shown on a Canadian TV News Story

My Twitter friend, Alec Courosa was recently interviewed by a reporter from a Canadian TV news show concerning Twitter. He then posted a copy of the video shown on TV, on a few of his social networks sites.

I watched the video and  thought he did a great job.  However, I was especially excited when I saw that my Tweet and picture were shown. I was also thrilled when he mentioned that he recently attended a conference where he met a lot of his Twitter contacts face to face for the first time and that he got many hugs. This is because I was also at the same conference and was one of the people that hugged him.

Here is the video from the CBC TV channel:

On that note, be careful what you Tweet because you never know where it may show up. 🙂

My Son’s 15th Birthday

My family and I headed out to Downtown Disney yesterday to celebrate my youngest son’s 15th birthday. As we drove there, I started to reminisce about the events as they occurred on the day he was born.

The date was Feb. 7th, 1994 and it was a beautiful day. My doctor had chosen to induce me so I could resume taking some medication that I needed at the time. My in-laws arrived at my home the day before so they could stay with my older son, whom was then 5 1/2 years old, while my husband and I were at the hospital. My husband and I reported to the hospital early that morning at around 6:00 AM.

My labor was induced, I refused any medication for the pain and everything went very smoothly. My son was born naturally at 4:00 PM. At that moment, I remember being incredibly happy and picking up the phone to call my in-laws. To my surprise, no one was answering the phone and I started to get worried. However, a minute later I heard my mother-in-law’s voice. She, my father in law and older son had just walked into the hospital floor were I was at and she was asking the nurse at the front desk about my status. The nurse told her that my baby had just been born and directed them to my room.

My older son got so excited when he saw his new baby  brother.  I will never forget the first thing he said which was “mom, he looks like a puppet”. Precious words to hear from my older son. When I mentioned this in the car , to my the same son who is now 20 years old, he did not remember saying this. My husband also did not remember this.

I reminded my husband that when we got home from the hospital two days later, there were many live Peacocks waiting for us in our front yard.  No, this is not a typo. The neighborhood where I live is inhabited by many Peacocks and no, it is not normal to see wild Peacocks in Florida.

This is the story about how we got the Peacocks as it was told to me by a friend. She said that many years ago, a elderly couple had two Peacocks living with them as pets. This was against our city rules and ordinances as our area is not zoned for any kind of wildlife. The couple went away on a short vacation one time and while they were gone, the Peacocks escaped. They were found much later, but by then had reproduced and pretty soon our whole neighborhood had a colony of Peacocks.

Getting back to my original story, I wondered how in the world did the Peacocks decide to surround my front yard that day? Did the Peacocks sense that a new life would be coming back to my home that day?  It was as though they trying to celebrate with us the birth of our new baby.

When we arrived at my home from the hospital, my in-laws automobile and my other car were inside my garage.  Therefore, my husband and I had to park in our driveway and carefully navigate through the crowd of Peacocks. I was kind of worried that they might try to attack the car seat as I got out of my car with our new baby. This was because I had previously seen them take an defensive stand against other people and also animals. However, I should not have worried as they seem to get out of my way as I got out of my car to let me pass.

Well, it been a great journey since then. I believe that everything happens for a reason. While I cannot claim to know the reason why the Peacocks chose to surround my home that day, I can only speculate that maybe they sensed my son would live a good life and be a wonderful son to have. If that was the reason, then I guess they got it right.

My son is now 15 years old and I could not be any prouder as a mom.He is now a ninth grader and made the honor roll this semester. His GPA of 3.00 was higher than I ever achieved in ninth grade. We celebrated his birthday by going out to eat at. “The House of Blues, taking him shopping at the Lego store there and watching the movie, “Push”.  Needless to say, we had a wonderful time.

Here are some pictures of my son and some pictures of the Peacocks that I took at a much later date:

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IMG_2778

My older son meets his younger baby brother for the first time.

WilliamScieFair
WilliamScieFair

My son during the Science Fair last school year.

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2_11_08_fairRibbbon

My son showing off the ribbon he won when he placed fourth place for the Junior Environmental Science division.

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IMG_2020_1

My son and I on vacation last summer at one of the caverns in North Carolina

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IMG_2653

Here is a picture of a Peacock in my backyard.

Peacock
Peacock

Here is another picture of a Peacock on my back yard.

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IMG_2652

Here is another picture of a Peacock in my backyard.

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IMG_2651

Here is a picture of a group of Peacocks in my backyard

This is a video showing some of the Peacocks in Cape Canaveral that I found on Youtube.

So, does anyone have any ideas as to what might have caused the Peacocks to gather in my front yard that day or experienced a similar situation ? I look forward to your input.

Seven Things Meme

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I have not been tagged by anyone however, I noticed that many people are writing similar blogs. So, here are 7 facts you never knew about me:

1. I attended a NYC Junior High school which was secured by armed guards at the main entrance. It was a three story school and all other entrances and exits were chained locked during the school day. I am just grateful that the school never caught on fire while I was a student there.

2. During one of my childhood Halloween days, a teenager put a knief on my throat and demanded my Halloween goodies. I screamed and she took off running.

3. I used to get into trouble for daydreaming in class during my elementary school days.

4. When I was little, I enjoyed jumping out of second story windows, climbing tall fences and jumping from the roof-top of one brownstone building on to another one. My mother would have had a heart attack if she had seen me.

5. During the summer months of my childhood, I enjoyed:

a. Being out doors from sunup until midnight. I only went home for meals and to use the restroom.
b. Getting wet whenever someone illegally activated the local fire hydrants.
c. Informally dancing at street parties in NYC.

6. I grew up in the South Bronx, the arson capital of the world. Therefore, I have seen more fires then most firefighters.

7. Like Jennifer Lopez, I used to ride the number 6 train to my high school in another part of the Bronx. Unlike Jennifer Lopez, I am really from the block. She also grew up in the Bronx but attended private schools in Manhattan. Therefore, as far as I am concerned, she is not really from the block as her music album claims.

I now wish to tag my Twitter friends Pamela Gill and Eduardo Marcelo Peirano to write a similar blog.

My Favorite Inspirational Books

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Here is a list of my favorite inspirational books. All of these books are about surviving terrible true lifetime periods, seeing better days in the end, becoming stronger human beings because of these terrible events and are very educational to read. I think about these true life stories when I am going through hard times in my life and find hope that my life events are temporary and I will see better days.

1. Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown. This is a book I read as a child. Since I was also growing up in a similar ghetto environment as Claude and he became a successful lawyer, it inspired me to dream big like he did. I did pretty well as I am now a successful college professor these days.

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2. Mayada, Daughter of Iraq by Jean Sasson. I recently read this one and I now appreciate this country so much more. Whenever I get stressed out these days, I think of what she went through and the many people in Iraq and all of a sudden my life looks and feels so much better.

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3. A Child Called “It”: One Child’s Courage to Survive by Dave Pelzer. This one also gives me lots of hope when things are going wrong in my life. It also re-affirms that people can overcome terrible past life events, even abuse and still become productive members of society. He wrote this book to make people more aware of what the signs of child abuse are and where to get help.

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4. Until Death Do Us Part: My Struggle to Reclaim Colombia by Ingrid Betancourt This was the most inspiring book I have ever read. Wow, Ingrid is a real life hero. This women did so much to make things better for her country and put this priority ahead of her marriage and children. She was close to winning a presidential election when she finished writing this book.

Epilogue:

After this book was published, Ingrid got abducted in real life on Feb. 23, 2002 by a political terrorist group in Columbia and still remains in captivity to this day. I think of her and the family she left behind every day.

Update:

Ingrid and 14 other hostages were rescued on July, 2nd, 2008. The Colombian military tricked the terrorist group into giving up the hostages and at the same time, took two terrorist camp leaders with them and turned them over to the Colombian police. I am just ecstatic about this!!

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5. Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail by Malika Oufkir . Malika was almost royalty but one day something went very wrong and her and her entire family were thrown into an old castle which was converted as a prison never to be seen or heard from again. Fortunately, a member of her family escapes and thus this book was written. Because of this book, a lot has changed as far as how Morroco now treats its criminals.

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6. Escape from Slavery: The True Story of My Ten Years in Captivity and My Journey to Freedom in America by Francis Bok This is a very inspiring book about the atrocities that are happening to people in Sudan and the story of a person who escaped. Because of Francis Bok, the United States is now aware that slavery has never ended in that part of the world and is doing something to help.

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7. Sickened : The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood by Julie Gregory, This story was so educational. It explains everything about this terrible mental disease and why it is so hard for doctors to notice when these cases are happening. Again, this is a story about a survivor that is now trying to change things for the better, trying to bring more awareness about this condition so that people can intervene and hopefully save more children from being victims of this syndrome.

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So, what are some of your favorite inspirational books? Have any one of them inspired you to live your life differently?

Solving the Annoying Sparebackup Popup Problem

My son recently bought a new Gateway computer that unfortunately had Vista installed on it. I tried to upgrade his computer to Windows XP but there weren’t any XP drivers that worked with his new integrated Sound and Network cards. By the way, I am using the word, upgrade, here on purpose and it is not a typo. Laughing

He bought the computer from Circuit City and they preinstalled an online automated PC Data Storage software called,”Sparebackup”, found on this site: Sparebackup . You are probably wondering how I came to the conclusion that it was Circuit City and not Gateway which installed the software, well the following site hints that this may be the case: Tech Support Agreement site .

This software was configured to automatically start up during every boot. It would open up MS Explorer 7 once a day regardless of whether you were using it and display a popup advertisement reminding you that, “your Hard Drive will fail and urging you to use their service”. It did not matter that my son had the popup blocker activated, as it would bypass the blocker. I suggested that my son deactivate Java in his Windows Explorer 7 options and even this did not stop the problem. Needless to say, this was very annoying.

My son asked me for help. Usually, the first thing I do before offering anyone help is to Google the problem. This is how I came up with the possible Java solution which unfortunately did not work. However, the following sites looked promising:

Sparebackup Online Storage Site

GateWay Computer Support

Computer Help Forum

All three sites gave exactly the same solution however what they failed to mention is that you cannot uninstall a program that is running and this specific software is pre-configured to not let you quit the program. When you followed the instructions on the first and second site, a Windows message would appear informing you of this and stated that the programs will automatically be terminated by Windows. However, apparently this software was written to also bypass this Window’s feature.

I would then try to manually quit the program by right clicking on it from the Windows Vista Taskbar and left clicking on the EXIT button that appeared but it would not stop running. Here is a picture of the Window’s Vista Taskbar:

So after a few tries at uninstalling the program using the instructions provided and failing to achieve my goal, I decided to take a new approach.

I started the computer in safe mode and followed the instructions which again did not work. I then remembered my old friend, “MSCONFIG”, from Windows XP. I did not know whether it was still available in Windows Vista so I tested my idea by using the run command and typing in the program name. To my surprise, the program is still there and came right up. This is a picture of what it looks like:

I clicked on the STARTUP tab and found that this program was listed. I clicked on the little square to the left of it to get rid of the check mark and then clicked on the APPLY and OK buttons. Next I re-started the computer. I was now able to follow the instructions on how to remove it shown on the first and second site listed above.The problem is now resolved.

Another possible solution to end this program that I did not try was pressing the CTRL + ALT + DEL key combination which would bring up this dialog box:

Now click on,”START TASK MANAGER”, it will appear and looks like this

You would then click on the PROCESSES tab and find the name of the process you want to terminate. Select it and click on the END PROCESS button on the bottom of this window.

As I previously stated, I did not try this solution. This is because a lot of times, the name of the process does not match the name of the program that you are trying to terminate. Hence, if the name is different, you would not know which process to terminate. Also, sometimes there is more then one process that the program is running and if you do not terminate all of them, the program may still run.

I really hope this helps someone. Shame of these sites for not informing people how to properly uninstall this program. Shame also on the Sparebackup company for employing coercive marketing techniques.

My Special Thanksgiving Story

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I got married 23 years ago to a wonderful man who is still my husband. We have two great sons and I have spent every Thanksgiving weekend with him since then. Some years, we also had our special dinner at his mother’s home who lives just 2 hours away from our home.

For most of our married life we have had a heavy financial burden which most people refer to as a mortgage. Therefore, I was never able to travel to spend this holiday with my side of the family whom live in another state.

Likewise, most of the people on my side of the family also had big mortgages and were not able to visit me. My mother’s only income is Social Security. Therefore, the last time I saw my mother and sister was 5 years ago. I had also not seen my other sister for 10 years. Recently, this situation has changed as my husband and I finally paid off our mortgage debt.

So, this year, I woke up on Sunday the week before Thanksgiving and decided that it was time for a visit. I got on the Web to make my flight arrangements. I called my niece, whom recently moved back to the town where my mother and sisters live and asked her if she had room for one more person for Thanksgiving.

She asked me why and told me she was expected at my mother’s home for dinner at 2:00 PM. I told her that her schedule was perfect since my flight would arrive at 1:00 PM. She was very excited to hear the news and immediately offered her home as a place to stay. I quickly accepted and asked her not to reveal my plans as I wanted to be a surprise guest. She promised to keep my secret and to pick me up at the airport. So far, everything seemed to be going great and I felt so happy.

After I got off the phone, I started to tell my husband all about my new Thanksgiving plans. He was very shocked at first but finally stated that it was a great idea. He said that he would manage just fine along with my sons and that they would go to a cafeteria to eat dinner. Needless to say I felt very guilty at first but finally concluded that I deserved to spend this day with my mother and sisters for the first time in 23 years.

The day finally arrived. I got on two flights which went very smoothly and got there on time as scheduled. My niece picked me up at the airport and we went directly to my mother’s home. I had butterflies in my stomach and was kind of worried that my mom would have a heart attack upon seeing me since she is eighty plus years old.

When we got to the house, my niece told me that everything looked perfect as she noticed that both of my sister’s cars were in the driveway. She said for me to follow her so I could nonchalantly walk into the home right after her. I did exactly that. My niece had a key to my mother’s home so she knocked on the door and quickly let herself and her family in. I casually walked in right after them.

The first person to see me was my middle sister whom I last saw five years ago. She gasped as soon as she recognized me and then said,”oh my God”. This reaction then caused my youngest sister who I last saw 10 years ago, to check out what the fuss was about. She also had the same response.

My mother then walked into the room to find out what the commotion was about and suddenly noticed me. She started screaming with joy and had tears in her eyes. Wow, what an incredible moment this was in my life. Everyone was hugging and kissing me. The feeling I had was just wonderful and I truly felt blessed. It was just so great to see my family members again. My mom said, “it was the nicest Thanksgiving present she could ever get”.

I stayed in town until Sunday morning and then flew back to Fl. I had the most amazing time and I can hardly wait to do this again. Now that I no longer have a financial related excuse, I will be doing this more often. As a popular TV commercial implies, family memories are just priceless, for everything else there is MasterCard. Here are some pictures:

My mom and I when I first got there.

My Mom and I when I first got there.

My two sister and I.

My two sisters and I

My middle sister and my mom.

My middle sister and my mom.

My family clan and I.

My family clan and I.

The women in my family clan and i.

The women in my family clan and I.

The men in my family clan and I.

The men in my family clan and I.

The nephew holding up my niece's daughter.

My nephew holding up my niece’s daughter

My fireworks during the Cleveland city Christmas parade.

The fireworks during the Cleveland city Christmas parade.

Posing with my family members on the last night of my trip.

Posing with my family members on the last night of my trip.

Epilogue:

Concerning the possibility of my mom having a heart attack, my nephew in law told me an amusing story. He related that when he first moved back into town, which was pretty recent, my mom invited him and his family to her house. She then picked up a Tae Bo exercise tape and asked my niece and nephew to participate with her in her exercise routine.

Thinking that my mom would only do ten minutes of the tape, my nephew in law and niece agreed to join in. Well, my niece was the first one to quit after only 20 minutes, my nephew in law was the next one to quit. To everyone’s shock and amazement, my mom completed the whole exercise routine. So, I guess I should not have worried and I am so happy to know that my mom is so physically fit.