In 1987 we went to Australia with the girls to visit my Grandmother.  We stopped in Fiji on the way and stayed at the Hyatt Regency Hotel.  It looked like this:

Today the same hotel is called the Warwick and it looks like this:

I extended my stay in Fiji by one day to go and see the changes and was surprised by how little it had changed in 24 years.  There are are a few more comparison pictures below.  Just click on the read more button.

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A few months ago Nurit and Lillian went on a driving trip through the Mohave National Preserve.  At the Kelso Junction they ran into reporter who was writing a story for the AAA magazine.  It ran this month in the Northern California Edition.

More evidence that it pays to go off the beaten path.

Has lost its title.

One of my jokes for the last two years has been:

“We are the poster family of the Obama revolution….

Three generations and nobody is working.”

But I can’t say it any more.  Rebecca has a job for the next six months with the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT).  She will be working in Salem with the people who identify and preserve historic bridges.  It is the perfect job for her.  It is preservation, bridges and West Coast.  I am proud and delighted.

Now I have to admit that Lillian has been working as a graduate assistant at UNLV for the last year.  It is a really great gig but I was able to discount it as she was primarily a student.  She graduates in May and then I will be the only one in the family who doesn’t have a Masters Degree.

I got my camera back on Friday, no charge and in exactly a week.

To test it I took some pictures of our animals.

Missy (the brave)

Abby (the older)

Belle (coy)

Evelyn (hunter)

I also took some pictures of Autumn in Pasadena that I will post tomorrow.

Following up on my J C Burrow post my sister in law Jean B discovered this picture of Burrow Farm in Somerset:

Burrow Farm

It comes from a very interesting website, Geograph.org.uk They are attempting to have a photographic image of every kilometer of the United Kingdom.  Very cool.

It would be the perfect thing for tourism oriented states like New Mexico and Vermont to attempt.  Has it been usurped by Google maps/images?

This one is complicated.  Rebecca and Bethany have found a distant Burrow relative and I played a small part in it.

Last summer while looking for something else I found the photo above.  It was taken by my grandfather’s uncle, J C Burrow, exactly 100 years ago and is of of an ancient church in Cornwall.  J C Burrow was an early photographer and was one of the first to take photos in mines.

On the back is some information about the site.  I emailed it to Rebecca who was in York with an offer to fund a trip for her down to Cornwall to find the church and whatever else she could about J C Burrow.  Before she went my brothers Tom and Matt  contributed more information and many more scanned photos.  And it turned out that Bethany, Tom’s daughter, had made a previous expedition to Cornwall and had lots of information.  Armed with all of this data, a rented car and a few friends she headed to Cornwall.   She couldn’t find the site of the church but did visit the Royal Cornish Museum and one of the docents told her about a woman named Rosemary Richards.   She is a granddaughter of J C Burrow and sometimes worked as a volunteer at the Museum.

Pretty cool but it gets better.  A few weeks later Rosemary showed up in York to visit Rebecca.  She wrote down her mailing address on a piece of paper along with a sketch of the family burial plot in Truro.   I’m going to send her a postcard and perhaps sponsor another expedition.  Any volunteers?  You may have to go soon because Rosemary is quite old.

I can’t explain why, but it is very nice to have found a distant relative.

Theo and Robert’s Cat:

In the UK

Rebecca’s Cat:

In California.

Coincidence or Cousins?

On the way back from our excellent trip to Italy we stopped in the UK.  The weather was perfect and we had time to go to Walthamstow and meet our new grand nephew, Nicholas Burrow.  Nicholas is the son of my nephew Robert and his lovely wife Theo.

It was well worth the visit.

Nicholas already has a hobby.  He, like his father before him, collects “moosobelia.”

Click for more Photos on Flickr.

When you are in Maui go up to Napili for breakfast at the Gazebo Restaurant.  The people who run it do a booming business and have a good sense of humor.  There is often a line so they have a sign:

If there are not busy it reads:

And if you flip the sign one more page it reads:

It even gets a chuckle out of people who have been waiting in line for 45 minutes to eat breakfast.  They serve good food and have a great view but what makes the place unique is wonderful attitude of the staff.  The clever sign is just a symbol of that attitude.

Nurit finish two new quilts.  This one is with Rebecca in York:

And this beautiful baby quilt she gave to Juniper the new grand-daughter of our good friends John and Gloria A.

If you’d like to see more pictures of the quilts on Flickr click here.