88 Years of Fun!

Trinity, Robby and I met my parents yesterday to pack up all of dear Uncle Maurice's belongings. He is now permanently in his assisted living center, and so it was time move his things from the apartment next to the church where he was a priest for the past 16 years and put everything in storage. He served as cruise director the entire time. He sat at the foot of the steps and shouted up questions and requests to his five little worker bees upstairs. He is 88 years old and his mind is still razor sharp. He knew where everything was. We were quickly delighted by some of the quirky things we found and packed.

One of my first fab finds was his black biretta. Priests wear black ones, bishops wear violet and cardinals wear crimson. He explained all of this to me before I helped him put it on his head. He happily wore it for most of the afternoon.

Precious

We also found many framed pieces from various popes. I believe this one was from Pope Pius from when Uncle Maurice was ordained in 1949.

T located this fish statue which he realized was actually Jim Beam liquor from 1974. It was still sealed. How awesome is that?

Robby was thrilled with the record collection, including the record player that we later found.

Baileys! This one is a shout out for my two Bailey swiggin' ladies, Kate and Court.

We also found more liquor to take home. Look at those old paper seals. I remember those from when I was a child. I've never had Crown Royal before, but now I have my very own bottle.

Commemorative 7Up bottles from the 70s.

A large bottle of holy water from a monastery in France. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this.

Matchbooks from all of his travels. Hawaii, China and Mexico were just a few places we located amongst the mass of restaurants and hotel boxes. So kitschy and cool. We also found tons of old sports equipment including this Notre Dame football and these tennis balls. We packed up golf clubs, badminton racquets and tons of Notre Dame goodies.

Rob took home the coolest wool Notre Dame stadium blanket that has to be at least 40 years old. It was pristine. I didn't fight him. Touching wool is not among my pleasantries in life.

The major award close up. This was T's happiest find of the day. I'm so glad that we were able to do this while Uncle Maurice was still here to tell us all of the stories behind things. He remembers all of it.