No more unibrows!!

I've been taking Gabriella to have her eyebrows waxed for about a year now.  Well, since she started 7th grade.  Yes, my middle school diva wants a nice, clean glabella, which is the proper term for the space between your eyebrows. Ha! 
And every trip there cost ten beans.  I know!

When I took her last week, I attempted to pay with a large bill and was quickly told that their policy was to accept nothing larger than a $20.  I panicked because I had forgotten my debit card and had no where to get change.  The girl that had waxed Gabriella's eyebrows suggested I go to one of the stores nearby to "get change," and she suggested Sally's Beauty Supply.  I had to leave my daughter at the wax place as collateral while I ran to Sally's.
Well, I felt uncomfortable just walking in and asking them to break my large bill and not buy anything, so I walked into the first aisle I got to and immediately saw this:

What a serendipity moment!  It was their last one and it was on sale.  I saw the label that said "kit," but didn't know what all it included, and there was another lady eyeing it also, so I quickly grabbed the warmer and yelled like a crazy woman for assistance. Haha!

Can you believe it? I no longer have to pay to keep those eyebrows looking good (:
Thank goodness for the the wax place's policy.  Otherwise, I would have continued to pay them every few weeks for something I can DIY.
Oh, and did I mention that the entire kit was on sale for $29.99?  The photo doesn't show it, but it came with the warmer, wax, cloth strips and the instructional CD.  The only additional thing I had to buy was the little popsicle stick things to apply the wax, but they were only about $4.  So buying this kit will pay for itself after only three waxes!

I was one happy mama.  And I'm not bothered in the least that the Sally's worker thinks I'm crazy (:

Sightseeing

Well, my family made an impromptu trip here yesterday:

South Dakota is such a beautiful state!  We'll definitely be back (:

Vasquez, Basquez (:

With this month's "roots" theme, I've written of my family, included pictures, our family tree, etc.  

I've also written in the past how I was raised by my single mom because, well, there isn't any nice way to say it except to say that my "dad" was a piece of $*&t deadbeat loser.  He died sometime last year...or maybe it was the beginning of this year...don't really care to remember.  I'm not sure what caused his death either.  Not that it matters much to me.  And this will probably be the last time he is ever mentioned in my blog, because I only write of what is important to me.

So, you see, when I talk of my family, well, I am speaking of my mom's family.
The only family from my "dad's" (I use that term very loosely)  side of the family that I claim and love, are my tía Aurelia, tío Pru, and their daughters, Cindy, Jackie, Diana and Gina and their children.  They are excellent people that really had the misfortune of being related to that "man" person.
I always thought it was funny because their last name is Basquez, and my family on my mom's side are Vasquez.  Weird, huh?
I have so many fun memories with my Basquez family members.  I even went to high school one year with those girls.  And we had a blast!  

I shared a room with Diana, and boy, we'd stay up late every.  single.  day.  just talking and giggling about everything under the sun.  As a matter of fact, every single memory I have with them are happy memories.  The best memories of laughing until our sides hurt with all of us involved in some silly dance, or song or whatever.  Everything we did together always turned into the best day ever.  And I am so blessed with having them in my life. My awesome tío Pru, living with five women...I'm sure we drove him crazy, but he always had a beautiful smile on his face, and he had the most contagious laugh.  He was the epitome of what a father should be.  I loved him so very much.  In fact, everybody he met loved him.  Unfortunately, he passed when Marko was a baby.  His death was such a tremendous loss to all who were fortunate enough to have known and loved him.
Here is a very old picture of my tíos:

My tío was a large man.  He had to be to be able to hold his gigantic heart.  He and my tía raised my cousin Jackie as their own after Jackie's mother passed away when Jackie was very young.  Jackie has also passed away now.  She was pretty amazing too.  She was one of the most unselfish human beings I have ever known and her story deserves it's own post someday.

Cindy and Gina are so awesome and I love them so very much.
Cindy and her husband, Lupe, just lost their beautiful daughter, Christina in November and their strength and faith truly leaves me in awe.

This is my sweet cousin, Diana and her daughter, Courtney:

Please include Diana and her family in your prayers.  Diana has been hospitalized for the last month and I so miss our marathon phone conversations.
I love you sweet D, and I miss you so much.  Please get well soon!!

Family Tree, part II

I have always been fascinated by family trees.  And the bigger it is, the better.
I finally made one for our family about six months ago and I plan on updating it once a year.  As far as I know, one had never been made and I felt it was important.  I wrote a post about it back when I made it, but with this month's "roots" theme, well, I thought it was appropriate to include it again.

I find it so interesting to see just how large our family really is, and I only started it with my grandparents, Amá and Apá.  Well,  now that I think about it, I guess I shouldn't be that surprised at the size of our tree...I mentioned just this week that my grandparents had 17 kids (!), and of those 17, 14 survived.
A funny story I remember my mom and tías telling is that with Amá having so many kids, that when one of them was sick, she would go get the cough syrup or aspirin, etc., and by the time she'd get her spoonful of the medicine measured out, many times, she would end up giving it to the wrong child!  Wow.
Here are a couple pictures of my mom and her siblings as kids:

This picture is my all-time favorite of Amá.  She is the one on the left, by the way.
I love, LOVE that someone froze this moment in time when she was such a young mother and I love that she climbed on top of that pickup with her sister-in-law, Libertad (both in dresses!) to take a picture with their small kids.  The little boy on the lower right of the picture is my Tío Marcos (her oldest), and the baby right next to her is my Tío Pablo.  The baby next to Tía Libe is her baby, Maye.

This is Amá with her first six kids (:

This next one is of my mom and only eight of her siblings.  My mom is on the far right:

The next picture is some of my mom's younger siblings.  From L-R, it's my tíos, John, Danny, Joe, Pete, Yolanda and Sylvia.  And I'm the baby in the picture. Haha.

  

And the picture below was taken during a trip to South Dakota.  With everyone that went on the trip, I imagine we had some sort of a caravan going on...right?  And that would be moi on the lower right in front of Amá...and I'm stuffing my fat face with something. Haha.  My family is going to South Dakota tomorrow, so I'll have to remember to refrain from having any pictures taken while I'm eating/drinking (:

Regarding the tree I made, my goal is to eventually go back even further in our history.  I know it isn't happening anytime in the very near future, but maybe by the end of the year (?)

Here is my version of our tree.  I'm not sure why it appears so "boxy" in the picture below.  It doesn't print that way:

Along the trunk of the tree, I have my grandparents' names and the entire tree is their offspring and their families.  The size is crazy, huh?
I think so.

Have a great day!

Time travels...

Well, I've talked a little about how food has always been a big part of my "roots."  Something else that was perhaps just as important is of course, music.

I grew up listening to a wide variety of genres of music.  Some of my aunts and uncles, especially the older ones, played their 8-tracks...Yes, 8-tracks of various Spanish music.  I especially remember this song by Juan Gabriel: 
My younger aunts and uncles listened to Tony Orlando & Dawn: 

or Freddy Fender: 


I remember my aunts, Sylvia and Yolanda taking me with them on their dates with my now uncles and listening to "Knock 3 Times" or "Before the Next Teardrop Falls."  I was about 5 years old at the time, and I remember I learned the lyrics to those songs pretty quick.  (:
I heard one of those songs about a year ago on an oldie station and it immediately took me back to my childhood.

My mom also listened to all of this music, but she also listened to country.  Boy, I remember belting out this old Patsy Cline song:


And also old Loretta Lynn/Conway Twitty songs like nobody's business!  Especially this one: 

I may or may not turn the volume all the way up and sing along while watching "Coal Miner's Daughter." Haha.

So I guess you I can honestly say that I listened to country since before country was "cool," because, well, country is very cool!

Later on when 80's music came along, well....that goes without saying.  It is simply the best music in the world.  Who can forget REO Speedwagon?  Or Foreigner?  Michael Jackson??  

Apá listened to Carlos y Jose, which isn't music I would personally choose to listen to, but every once in a while I'll be flipping through stations on the radio dial and I'll come across one of their songs and it instantly reminds me of Apá.

Isn't it amazing how a certain song has the ability to  flood you with memories of a certain place, or person?  I think most everyone has that "time travel" effect from listening to a certain song.  I find that pretty amazing.

Oh, and just to clarify...I found these videos on Youtube, and we most certainly never saw them back in the day because we didn't have the internet, MTV, etc. back then. (:

Until tomorrow! 

Amá

This afternoon, as I went through the motions of putting a small mountain of beans on my kitchen counters so I could sort them out, rinse them off, and finally put the beans in my Crockpot to cook, I couldn't help think of Amá (my grandmother), and how she did this every day.  She would let me help her sort the beans and rinse them.  I remember feeling really grown-up and special as I helped her cook.
Amá never cooked her beans in a Crockpot, maybe because they weren't made big enough for the massive amounts of food she would make at every meal.  Did I mention how she and Apá had 17 children?  I guess they had 17 children total, but only 14 survived.  Pretty amazing, huh?  That certainly deserves its own post sometime this month!

Anyway, Ma always cooked her beans on her stove top.  And I mean a huge pot...like the ones used to make tamales!  It looked something like this:

(Via Google)

Since my mom was always working, Amá was the one that took care of me most all of the time.  I think I must have been pretty well-behaved because, well, I don't have any memories of being in trouble.  That could only mean that I was well-behaved, right?  Sounds good, so we'll just leave it at that. (:

I loved spending time with Amá.  She was the epitome of a mother and grandmother, and I was blessed beyond measure at having her in my life.  I think I am the only one of all of my cousins that had that special bond with her.  And for that I am so grateful.  All of my cousins were blessed to have both parents and I was the only one that was being raised by a single parent, so that may have been why I was always raised around my awesome grandparents.  Whatever the reason, I was blessed and I wouldn't change a thing about my childhood.

Amá only spoke Spanish, so that was my first language.  I used to sing in Spanish as a small child because I would hear Amá singing and I would learn the songs.  I loved hearing her sing and she had a beautiful voice. She was awesome.  I don't have one memory of her being mad or even upset about anything.

 She was always in a good mood and it was so contagious.  You just couldn't help feeling warm and secure in her presence.  When I was little, we lived on a farm in Fort Morgan and I would help her after school or on school breaks as she cooked to feed her large family, and at every meal, without fail, there was always a mountain of her delicious flour tortillas.
I would sit at the table talking to her as she made her little balls of dough:

(Via Google)

and she would join in, and even if I bored her with my childish conversations, she never let on.  She always made me feel important.
In hindsight, I feel a little guilty because she would start rolling those tortillas out and as soon as she would put a hot-off-the-comal tortilla on the table to start her "mountain"...well, I would immediately grab it and start spreading butter on it and eat it as quickly as the butter would melt. This went on for at least the first three...or four.  Sometimes even five (!) tortillas.   I always managed to hinder her "mountain" from even starting up because they were just so good and I just couldn't resist.  And she never complained.  Her huge stack of tortillas didn't ever start up until I was full (:

(via Google)

Amá's stack of tortillas was always about 3 times this size and they would always be gone at the end of each meal.  I don't know how she did it.  She was simply amazing.  I really think that I got my love of cooking from growing up watching her cook.  And I love that.  Something else that I do not think is a coincidence is the fact that I am unable to cook small portions of food.  I always cook in huge pots too, just like Amá did.

You know how I mentioned that she only spoke Spanish?  Well, I clearly remember sitting at her feet while we watched "The Young and the Restless" together every weekday.  And she never asked me to interpret for her!  Maybe she understood English, but just never let on?  Haha...You think?  

This picture is of my beautiful Amá and me:

I actually remember the day this was taken.  We lived in Alliance, Nebraska, and we had gone to a grocery store that was right by the overpass.  We walked in and I told her "Look Amá, they're taking pictures!, Can we take ours?"
So we did.  

I treasure this picture.  Especially because I have such a vivid memory of this day.  I remember skipping alongside her as I held her hand.  You can tell by my bedhead that I was not ready for pictures.  But I didn't care.  I loved Amá and she loved me.
Can you see that mark on my cheek?  My uncle Jr., his wife, Cruz, and their then bratty kids (haha) had visited from Texas not too long before that, and during that visit, their son, Mark, bit me on my face!  I remember having a life-sized stuffed doll with a plastic face that I loved and cousin Mark bit the doll's face on the cheek and then proceeded to bite my face.  I remember crying so much.  I wasn't used to anyone hurting me, so I was very upset. He got into big trouble for that...not that it made much difference to me at the time.
My cheek eventually healed up.  My poor doll's didn't.  I remember being so upset for months because my doll's beautiful plastic face was distorted from her cheek being all twisted up.  I thought it was the end of the world.

One thing I have always remembered Amá telling me, and I've actually taught my own daughter was this:
When I was about maybe 4 or 5, I had just had a bath and I was putting lotion on my face as you can imagine a child doing it...pretty sloppy and all over the place.  Amá sweetly told me to never rub down on my face because I would grow up having wrinkles on my face.  And to this day, I always remember her saying this and I never, ever pull down on my face.  Isn't it funny how such little things in life end up being such important things?
  
Amá passed when I was 12.  And I miss her so, So much.  I really wish my kids could have known her.  Their lives would be so much richer had they had this beautiful lady in their lives.

Amá, you were the best grandmother ever.
Rest in peace.

Family Tree

I've always been intrigued by genealogy and all the awesome sauce associated with it.  I find it so fascinating to discover anything about my ancestors because well, nobody in my family seems to care or find the time to do it.  I'm hoping it's the latter.  It's funny because anytime my mom or aunts and uncles are around, I'll pick their brains for any bit of information they can offer to help me piece together the great big puzzle that is our family history.  It is, after all, our history and it's important that it gets documented somewhere and not forgotten.  I figure that as difficult as it has been for me to find this information out, future generations would have an even harder time doing it.  I also love any old pictures I can get my hands on.  They are my absolute favorite.  I love looking at old pictures of the older generations in my family when they were children.  This is probably the reason I love photography so much.  Creating memories.

And now, the ever-addicting Pinterest has put beautiful inspirations for DIY family trees like this one available for me to drool over:

 Via

I love the simplicity of this one.  Or this one:

Via 

 Via

I also love this one because of the straight lines and the handwriting.

Via

And I LOVE the one above because it is an incredible list of somebody's family members.  Isn't it simply beautiful??!! I think Yes!

On Pinterest you can even find some websites you can go to and have a family tree made for you.  I would have loved to have just send a list of all of my family members off to have my family tree custom-made, but they are expensive!

I refrained from doing this for two reasons:
 a)I love any DIY project, and b) I'm cheap.  (:

So I did it myself.  It really wasn't too difficult and although I'm only about 98% finished with it, I decided to go ahead and do a post about it.
Here is my version of my family tree on my mom's side of my family:

I am amazed at how large my mom's family really is!  I remember a family reunion we had some years back and we actually had it for an entire week (!) and were able to do so many activities with everyone.  And because there were so many of us there, it was so much fun...visiting with so many cousins, aunts and uncles and nobody wanted to go home.  I will definitely be planning another reunion soon.

It's hard to see on the picture, but the "ground" is actually a poem I found online that I thought was pretty fitting.
I love it, and I plan to have it framed and matted for my mom.
I also plan to update it every year.

Have any of you made a family tree lately?  You should. (:

Final final

Today I will take my final final and I can't tell you how happy happy that makes me!
I think all of this studying for finals has really fried my brain.  I actually had to backspace in the last sentence because I wrote brian the first time.  Then I looked at it for a second because it had the red squiggly line underneath it and I actually went back to capitalize it! ha!
I wish I were kidding.

Oh, Happy day!!
I hope your day is just as great (:

New Toy Update!

Remember how I mentioned a while ago how the hubs surprised me with a new camera?
Well, I have been having a blast with it!

These are just some of the pics I've taken:

Some beautiful flowers the hubs brought home a few weeks ago.  They've since died, of course, so I am so glad I was able to take a pic of them in all their glory:

These are some pics of my handsome, talented son, Marko serenading us with beautiful music at breakfast (:

Tuesday night we got a downpour (Thank you God!), and this is on the drive home:

And this is my beautiful baby, Gabriella.  I am in love with the performance of my new camera, by the way.  It's pretty amazing.
 I plan on finally learning how to use Photoshop during the Christmas break from school.  I ended up getting Photoshop 5 at school on clearance (!)  It's the super-duper Photoshop that comes with Illustrator and absolutely everything else and I seriously got it dirt cheap since they've since released the 6th version.  Boo Yeah!! 

Have I mentioned how much I LOVE my new toy?

Have a fantastic weekend!!

Traditional v. Non-traditional woes

O.k...so you know how I'm going to school as the most non-traditional student EVER, right?  Yeah, that's what I'm called.  And yeah, it's just a nice way of stating the fact that I'm...ahem...older than traditional students right out of high school.  (:
Anyway, this "non-traditional" title was never more evident than this week.

My classmates and I were sitting in one of my journalism classes waiting for our professor to walk in and start the class and we were discussing among ourselves an assignment that was due that day.  It was something we had to get from the internet.  Well, two of the students kids (a boy and a girl.  And yes, I am calling them kids because they are literally only a couple years older than my son, Marko!) ended up printing the exact same picture and they weren't too happy about this coincidence.  Had that happened to me, as an old a non-traditional student, I would have simply explained to the professor that it was merely a coincidence...right?

HA!!

My jaw about hit the damned floor when they immediately started their Rock, Paper, Scissor bullshit!!

Oh My Gaaawwd I literally felt the grey hair oozing out of the pores in my head!!

Christmas in August

Christmas came early for me this year.  I'm not sure why, it just did.

I mentioned receiving a couple new toys in my previous post and boy, was I surprised!  A couple weeks ago, I woke up to find the hubs and Tita gone and didn't think much of it.  I figured they had gone to the grocery store or the gas station for something.

They got home a little while later and the hubs handed me a huge box that contained this:

(via Google)

To say I was shocked was a big, fat understatement.


I had this camera for a couple years and while I am completely comfortable using it, it's capabilities were somewhat...limited and I felt I had outgrown it.

(Via Google)

I had been wanting a Big Girl camera for quite a while, but didn't expect to actually get one just yet.

I have been watching the DVD that came with the camera, plus reading up on the manual.  Hopefully, I'll learn some basic functions on it soon.  I'm so anxious to use it and actually know what the hell I'm doing.

As if that weren't enough, the hubs also bought me a new sewing machine.  My old machine literally broke down during Finals week, so I didn't have it all summer.  Big-time bummer because I had so many projects I wanted to work on during my long summer break from school.

Needless to say,  I was absolutely speechless, which, if you know me personally, doesn't happen often. (:

Again, I don't know what I did to deserve my Christmas early.  Maybe Santa had heat-stroke with the heat wave we'd been having.  You think?

I am so thankful and blessed for my husband's thoughtfulness.

Thanks Babe.  What you did is very much appreciated.

Love you,

Saturday night (:

The hubs and I grabbed the kiddos last night and headed to the Loveland Loves BBQ festival, and it was so much fun!
We were undecided between Eaton Days or the Loveland event.  I am so glad we chose to go to Loveland instead.
As soon as we got there, That Eighties Band was playing.  And if you know me personally, or have read this little blog for a while, you know I love me some 80s music with all my heart (:
Well, this band really rocks your socks off, let me tell you.  They had quite a crowd of people our age that were transported right back to our youth.  It was as if we were all loaded up into some awesome time capsule! HA!


They played Rick Springfield's "Jessie's Girl:"


 Madonna's "Vogue:"


and even Billy Idol's "Mony Mony," just to name a few songs.
Here's Idol's video:


And they played this song:


Eighties music just isn't complete without Michael Jackson's music, right?  Well, they did a great job on Jackson's classic, "Thriller."  The kids loved it.


And the crowd L-O-V-E-D them and the energy was out-of-this-world.  They were fantastic and really got their huge audience pumped up.  And I loved that they played one song right after another all night long.  They even played an extra 45 minutes because nobody wanted to see them go!  I guess nobody wanted to get out of that time capsule just yet.


I think all of the kids there were a little surprised to see their parents being so carefree.  It was so fun. (:
Everyone danced and had an excellent time.


We had just eaten dinner, so we didn't want any BBQ, but the kids got a soda and a funnel cake.


The kids knew quite a bit of the songs the band performed because, well, I sometimes torture them and I'll play a CD of that awesome music in the car.  And other songs they knew from various movies we've seen.


I don't have pictures, well, let me rephrase that: I do have pictures, but not good pictures, because I was having too much fun, and besides, there really wasn't anywhere to put my drink down to be able to TAKE pictures.  (:

If your Saturday was half as fun as mine, it was awesome.


Oh, and have I told you that we're headed to San Antonio/Corpus Christi, Texas next week?


Can't wait.


I've never been to Corpus Christi, by the way, so if any of you can let me in on any must-sees, I'd appreciate it!


Have a great Sunday!

Good things come to those who wait!

Quite a few years ago I picked the kids up from school when Marko was in 2nd grade and Tita was in 1st.  It was Mother's Day 2006.  The kids ran to meet me in front of the school.  They could hardly contain their excitement at what they carried in their little arms and you could see the pride in their beautiful little faces.


The kids had been working on their Mother's Day gifts for a couple weeks and finally, the day they could take them home to mama was here.
Tita presented me with a painted picture and a card and they were just beautiful and perfect.
Marko presented me with a small cup with what he said was a flower he planted himself with a few seeds.  It also was beautiful and perfect.
When we got home, I put my beautiful painted picture on the front of the refrigerator with a magnet and I placed the flower in a cup and set it by the kitchen sink and watered it.
Well, throughout the years, it never really grew, but it never died either.  So I hung on to it and continued to water it.
And throughout the years, every single time we moved to another house, the thought actually crossed my mind to toss it because as I said earlier, it just never grew.  But I always nixed the idea and kept it and continued to water it even though it was basically just a stump.  A green stump at that!
There were actually many times that I'd end up forgetting to water my stump and when I'd remember, I would water it and the entire thing would rise about 5 inches above the water!  I actually had to hold the clump of dirt containing the stump down so that the water could slowly work its way into the clump and it would finally sit in the cup right.  If it wasn't such a special gift, believe me, I would have chucked it long ago.
But I didn't.  And I am so glad I never did.


Here's why:

It finally started growing!  That's right. You can imagine my surprise!  And you can probably get a visual of me doing the Happy Dance.  Because I totally did (: 


It took six whole years later for it to finally do this:

Here's a picture of the bottom of the plastic cup Marko brought it home in.  Can you see his name?

Can you believe those rich, green beautiful leaves!  It's going to keep on growing, I just know it.
And I can't tell you how excited I am!....Not that I've let on...right?


I am going to buy the perfect pot for it because this old plastic one I found in the garage just isn't good enough.  It was good enough when it was a stump, but not now!  Those beautiful leaves deserve a beautiful pot...Right?  I think Yes.


You know, I couldn't tell you what kind of flower it is to save my life, nor could I ever explain the super-duper long delay in sprouting, other than it wasn't going to sprout until it was good and ready.  And it took 6 whole years for it to decide it was time.


It's as if Marko gifted me with it all over again.
And I don't think I have to tell how it makes me smile every time I walk by it.


It kind of reminds me of how I had to wait so many long years until I finally held my beautiful, perfect newborn miracle baby in my arms after resigning to the fact that I was never going to have a child of my own.  And then shortly thereafter, God gifted me with another miracle baby.


Good things really do come to those who wait.


Thanks again Son!  I love it all over again.




Galatians 6:9 And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.

Memory Lane

**Disclaimer: I had to edit this post because Blogger apparently had some technical difficulties that caused the post to be "published" almost every time I hit the enter key.  I was pretty P.O.'d by the time I finally got it to cooperate somewhat (!)  I finally gave up and posted it "as is."  Oh, and the pics and videos are via Google and Youtube.

Growing up in the 70s and 80s was absolutely awesome. I'm so very blessed to have been born when I was and all I got to experience. I wouldn't trade my childhood for any other era. My tween and teenage years were awesome because I grew up listening to the very best music EVER. I've talked about it in previous posts and I'll say it again: The music from that time was music. Those of you lucky enough to have grown up listening to music from the late 70s and 80s know what I mean.
Even now, whenever I listen to most any song from that era puts me right back to the carefree days of my youth and more often than not, I can even remember what I was doing, or where my mom and I were going, or even where my best friend Eleanor and I were hanging out. The good 'ol days, that's for sure.
One of my absolute favorite bands from this time was of course, The Bee Gees.

Awww...I remember you literally couldn't pass by a radio on the dial without hearing one of their songs blaring from the speakers. I remember I bought every single 45 I could get my hands on. I played each one about a 18 million times each. True story! For those of you that don't know what a 45 is, I'll spare you the trouble of looking in the history books:

I had all of these and more.
Who could forget their hits, such as Too Much Heaven:


Or Night Fever:




Or Stayin' Alive??:



Love You Inside and Out is another great one:




More Than A Woman:



The Bee Gees were brothers Barry Gibb, (the one in the middle, who, by the way, I used to swear I was going to marry him when I grew up..), and twins, Robin on the left and Maurice on the right. I was also a huge fan of their younger brother, Andy. And my bedroom was full of 45s. If any of my 45s were to get scratched, or say, melt in a pot of boiling hot gravy (this really happened and it deserves it's own post someday!), I immediately bought a replacement.
The Bee Gees' music will always be very special to me and I was beyond thrilled when Barry and Robin sang some of the Bee Gees songs on American Idol a couple years back. My neighbors probably remember that day because I turned the volume ALL the way up!
I was shocked to learn of Robin Gibb's death yesterday. I knew he had been in the hospital but I had kept up on his progress and he actually was improving. Unfortunately, his health deteriorated again and he passed. And I am so very sad.

But thanks to the internet and Youtube, their music will live on forever.
May he rest in peace.