Today was a cleaning/wash clothes kind of day. I let my laundry go to long and ended up with 4 loads to wash which is a pain with me trying to go up and down the stairs. I did get 3 loads done and the 4th load is in the dryer. I also need to wash some area rugs but I will do that next week.

The weather was warmer today, in the 40s. I can finally see the sidewalk again. The driveway has two icy patches and I hope the rain that is expected tonight will get rid of them. Tomorrow the weather is supposed to start turning cold again. I guess that winter is still here.

Now for some more memories. We used to go into the city to my Uncle Joe's bakery on 25 and I believe St. Louis but not sure. I know that it was only a few blocks from my Grandma Triska's house. Aunt Fran and Uncle Joe had a house on the lake in New Buffalo, Michigan. We used to go there for the weekend. It was a small cottage and I remember sleeping on the second floor in a room that had twin beds and it was really hot in there. You could hardly breathe when the weather was hot outside. Aunt Fran and Uncle Joe were not really Aunt and Uncle. They were my Dad's cousins, at least Uncle Joe was. Their last name was Karlovsky. The had a daughter named Ellen Ann who was a couple of year older than I was. It was alway fun to go to the beach and play in the sand and Ellen Ann had a large log that we would take into the water and hang on. We also used to have inner tubes (the inside of car tires) that we would put over our heads and under our arms and float in with the waves. Ellen Ann and I would also go to the Sokol Camp that was next door. There we could play ping pong and there was always a bunch of kids there. When we went to Michigan we always went very late at night as my uncle had to bake the pasteries and bread and Hoska before he left as he only had one other man helping him bake. The oven was a brick oven with wood fire underneath it, I think. It seems as if it took all night to get to New Buffalo in those days as there were no expressways and we had to take two lane roads to get there. We always had a good time there, playing games, laying in the sun and day dreaming of what our life was going to be when we got older. I was probably 4-9 years old when we went there. I always wonder what happened to Ellen Ann. Aunt Fran and Uncle Joe moved to New Buffalo, Michigan after they sold the bakery. I was much older than, high school, I believe. Uncle Joe got killed on the expressway on the way into the city (Chicago) where he had gotten a job after he sold the bakery. There was road construction and someone made a mistake and caused a 13 car accident killing Uncle Joe and another man in the van. Aunt Fran stayed in Michigan until she passed away many years later. I remember many family picnics there and we always had a great time.