Grateful for Gram (and all the grandparents out there)

Word of the Week

Ancestry (ann-sess-tree): Someone’s family or ethnic background. From old French, ancestre, meaning "forefather".

Ciao!

. . .and surprise! It’s Mary and Mike saying hello this week! We know Gram is usually in charge of this weekly blog, but we HAD to take over just this once. You see, we have a very special and important day to celebrate this week, and we couldn’t leave Gram in charge of it! It kind of honors her in a way. Sunday, September 13th is Grandparents Day!

We’ll admit that Gram did help us pick out the word of the week. We knew the word needed to be related to family roots, and Gram had just the word for us. So how do we honor our ancestry and our grandparents? Hmmm. . .

By creating a family tree, of course! As time goes on and future stories are shared, you’ll get to learn more and more about our family. A few sneak peeks couldn’t hurt though, right?

Here’s what we do know about our grandparents.

Our mom’s parents passed away when we were really small, so we don’t have too many memories of them. From stories she’s shared, they were very loving. Her dad was Italian, and her mom was Irish.

On our dad’s side, our Nonno passed away two years ago. We feel so incredibly lucky to have Gram in our lives each and every day! Life is always an adventure with her! By the way, Nonno is Italian for "grandfather". We could have called Gram Nonna, but she’s always been Gram to us. You guessed it! Our family is very very Italian. We love to cook, we love to eat, and we love to talk loudly! Did you notice our greeting this week? Ciao is used to say "hello" AND "goodbye" informally in both French and Italian! Gram taught us that.

We decided to create a family tree that traces back to both sets of grandparents. It seems easiest to start with yourselves, then think backwards. Take a look at ours, and give it a try! If you’re lucky enough to have grandparents in your life, ask them to share one personal fact about themselves. There’s always tons to learn! You could also learn a bit about them from other family members. . .or ask another older family friend about their life. Good friends are family too, you know!

Here’s what Gram had to share: “I’m sure you’ve noticed that for my birthday each year, I request a lemon birthday cake. I bet you didn’t know that this has been a tradition since I was a little girl. My mother would always bake me a lemon cake- with a very special, secret ingredient. . .olive oil! It’s a family recipe that I’ll pass down to you one day.”

Don’t worry- you’ll get Gram back again next time. Hope we did an okay job this week!

Ciao!