Tea with Grandmom

On Sunday, January 8th, we were invited to High Tea at Grandmom's house.  Most of the younger cousins were in attendence.  Grandmom was struggling to get around on her injured ankle but still managed to produce a delcious spread including salad, Irish soda bread, coffee cake bread, deli wraps and for dessert - brandy balls, almond snow caps and brownies. An assortment of teas was served.  I really enjoyed the Singing Dog Vanilla tea.  The cousins had a fine time escaping to the basement to do who knows what, eventually settling on a rousing game of hide and seek.  The three girls spent a good bit of time texting each other with their new cell phones as you can see from the picture.  a good time was had by all. 
One bonus from the day was that Grandmom was able to find some of her Dad's and my Dad's old film negatives for Mads to borrow.  Mads has set up a darkroom in our basement and can now make black and white prints from film negatives.  Two of her early attempts are posted here. According to Mom/Garndmom:    The first one, a contact print taken by Grandmom's Dad, Thomas Coyne,  is of the beach in Atlantic City. I think that Steel Pier is in the background. Aren’t the bathing suits a hoot? I didn’t see anybody that I recognized in the photo but I’ll bet that there is a relative or two in it. My guess is that it was taken around 1920 give or take a few years. My Mom and Dad were married in 1921. 

I don’t recall seeing the self photo of Dad. It was probably developed at the photo lab at White Sands before I met him. That’s where he became so interested in photography and they provided a developing lab for the soldiers to develop their own photos.That is where he learned how to process and develop film.  It shows the camera he loved. He bought it at the PX in New Mexico when he was serving at White Sands in 1954-55.