Happy Thanksgiving week, cousins and elders!

Hope you all have a great holiday! To get you in the mood, here's an old family photo from some 1970s holiday, probably Christmas, at Millers' Old Frontenac home. Grandma Sprick, looking splendid in scarlet, was surrounded by some of her grandkids: clockwise from left, Jane, Chris, Pam, Joe, Tuck, JoAnn and Chats.

The thrill of being an auntie

Whatever could get the aunties so excited? Why, the arrival of a wee cousin, of course. Here, Florence, Katie and Anna got the news via telephone that their sister Marion had just given birth to Danny. It was Dec. 20, 1961. Marion and Danny came home from the hospital on Christmas Day that year.

Osama bin Alfie??!!

No, the sainted Alfie was no mullah on the lam. In this 1970s photo, he got an assist in staying warm from Chats, who gave him the scarf off her neck.

Puzzle solvers

Cousins Tuck Kirkwood and Sarah Broberg pondered puzzles in the Millers' Old Frontenac basement on some holiday or other in this undated photo.

On Coffman Lane

You older cousins will recognize the venue below as the Brobergs' place on Coffman Lane in south Minneapolis. The house, which was designed by Uncle Wally, was an awesome modern place that the country cousins loved visiting.

Grandma Sprick inspected Marion's tulips one sunny spring day in the early 1970s as Marion and Florence looked on.

Marion, Wally, Sam and Dan.

Miller-ville

Scavenged these assorted photos of the Millers from Chatsies' photo collection: Looks like a picnic at Frontenac State Park in 1967, before Dad left for Vietnam. Nothing like a picnic where you have to wear your winter coats.

Alverna, Chris, Pam and Cathy in June 1967, after Bill's departure for Vietnam.

Halloween 1967; we carved three of the 30 or so pumpkins we grew in our Old Frontenac garden.

Chris and Cathy looked through a photo album with Grandma Sprick at Christmas 1985.

Chats met her cute new nephew, Zachary William Miller, in 1988. Nice facial expression, Chris!

Zachary was very excited to be admired by mom Mary, dad Chris and Auntie Chats. Wait -- maybe not.

Chris and daughter Moriah danced to "Love Shack" at Chats and Michael's 1996 wedding.

"I've always maintained..."

Found some great photos of Dad/Uncle Bill that I hadn't seen before in Chats' photo stash: Smoking a corncob pipe and trying to grow a beard (most guys in Winston-Salem, N.C., Dad's hometown, were doing so to celebrate the town's 1948 centennial) after World War II.

Dad and Mom in the late 1960s or early 1970s, post-Vietnam.

Dad schmoozed with an old Army buddy (Fred Ricker, we think) in this undated photo.

Apparently no one would play Rummikube, Scrabble, Clue, Old Maid, 500, Twister or anything at all with Dad in this undated photo, so he played a hot game of Solitaire with himself.

Dad and Mom during a 1990s Elderhostel to the Grand Canyon.

Grandkids Zachary and Moriah posed in typical Miller fashion with Dad in this September 1995 photo. Unfortunately for us all, especially his grandkids, Dad died of melanoma on March 1, 1996. We miss him still!

Cathy through the years

Your scrapblog editor never visits any relative without pilfering through their family photos, and her recent trek to Kansas to see Chats and Michael was no exception. Here are some photos of Chats through the years I took from scrapbooks in C&M's "German room":

Newborn Mary Catherine Miller meets older siblings Chris and Pam in August 1960. Chats was born in Baltimore, Md. Note the patches on my pants. Not a privileged childhood, but a happy one, for sure.

Alverna wrote on the back of this December 1960 photo: "Pam, Chris and Bill sing Christmas carols. (Cathy was about to cry!)" The Trapp Family Singers this bunch was not.

Cathy played with button-nosed cousin JoAnn Schmidt during a May 1961 visit to Minnesota.

Chris read to Cathy in the early 1960s, when the family lived in Ansbach, Germany. Alverna recorded this exchange on the back of this photo: "Wead to me, Cwis." "OK, Cathy."

Cathy in Germany. Could Alverna have cut her bangs any shorter??!!

In this photo of delicious food (including rosettes!) and priceless blue plates, you may also notice Chats and Pam, looking awfully serious. The occasion was Cathy's graduation from Lincoln High School in Lake City, Minn., where she was a top student.

Cathy during a 1993 vacation to Key West, Fla.

Bill Miller was always very proud of his beautiful and brilliant daughter. Here he posed with her at her 1995 wedding to Michael Northrup.

The Rev. Chatsies in 2004.

Visiting Chats and Michael, Part I

Your scrapblog editor is just back from several days in Andover (a suburb of Wichita), Kan., where she visited the Rev. Dr. Mary Catherine Miller Northrup, Esq., otherwise known as her sis and your cousin, Chatsies, and her wonderful brother-in-law, Michael. We hung out, walked the dogs, watched movies ("Up" and "State of Play"), played a hot game of Scrabble, shopped, touristed around, cooked (your scrapblog editor set off their smoke alarm during one pizza-making session), saw beautiful photos and heard the stories from their summer trip to the Holy Land, and visited a lively community college ethics class taught by Michael. In short, a great trip. Some snapshots: I took Chatsies a gift from Anna, a print of three little girls reading that she's always loved. (Anna's had it hanging in her house, then her apartment, since we were kids.) Chats was so thrilled that she had us re-enact the reading scene. Aren't we cute? Not sure what we were reading -- maybe one of Chatsies' childhood compositions, such as the immortal poem "Colors -- Think of Them." We visited the Wichita Museum of Art, a wonderful place with some really terrific art by such greats as Chihuly, Wyeth (several), Hopper, Cassatt and many more. Here Chatsies mugged with an Andy Warhol painting of Marilyn Monroe.

I really loved the prairiescapes and the Kansas art, including this one of cornstalks. Forgot to write down the artist, sorry.

Michael is the world's best brother-in-law. He even gave me his tennis shoes because I forgot mine! (Yes, my feet are as big as his!)

When Michael isn't teaching, running, studying or doing good deeds, he keeps up their lovely grounds and house. He put together this spiffy coat tree one day. Chatsies got it for him because she said he puts all his running clothes on their fancy dining room table. Isn't that what dining room tables are for??!!

When Michael wasn't looking, I snapped this copy of his high school graduation photo. What a good-looking fella, then and now!

Visiting Chats and Michael, Part II

As most of you know, Chats and Michael love dogs, and own two of the world's luckiest pups, the very sweet. gentle and well-behaved Sophie and Knoxie. Both were rescued after being injured and abandoned, and they know they've got it good now. Some photos: Sophie is their newest pup, a shy and gentle Lab. Despite her bum leg, she loves to run and play. Sophie came into Chats and Michael's lives after an earlier pet, Trixie, passed away last year. Knoxie's pit bull blood shows in her form, but she couldn't be a sweeter dog. The scrapblog editor would like one just like Knoxie, but don't tell her cats. Chats and the puppers.

Dog day afternoon is every afternoon at Chatsies' house.

We took them on long walks around Chats and Michael's Andover, Kan., housing development. Very nice walks -- saw deer tracks, cedar waxwings and bluebirds.

Chatsies pulls an LBJ beagle trick on docile Sophie.

Your journalist cousins

Pam and Chris Miller: Siblings' early interest in news leads to satisfying careers By Angelo Gentile, editor, Minneapolis Star Tribune Specialty Publications Group Nov. 4, 2009 - Two siblings who play key roles in the Star Tribune's newsroom pursued their interest in journalism from a young age. Pam Miller, one of two night metro editors, and her brother, Chris, who is the team leader for Minnesota Vikings coverage in sports, both were reporters and editors for their student newspaper, The Lincoln Torch, when they were high school students in Lake City, Minn. A couple of Army brats, the siblings traveled extensively with their family - they have a younger sister, the Rev. Cathy Miller Northrup, who is a Presbyterian minister in Wichita, Kan. - before settling in Lake City. So why the early and strong interest in journalism? "I'm a busy body - I like to know about things, everything," Pam joked recently, as she mused about her chosen profession. Chris said he loved sports from an early age - he played varsity basketball at Lake City's Lincoln High School - but had to eventually concede that he was a better writer than athlete. Additionally, both agreed that working in news is, well, always new. "I think I'm probably like a lot of us in this business," Chris said. "Everything is new and interesting every day, so that keeps my job new and interesting, too." Chris and the Vikings Indeed, for Chris, 51, leading the Vikings coverage this season is particularly compelling. The local pro footballers were already popular, but, with the addition of Brett Favre, the interest in the Vikings has reached giant proportions. Case in point? On the day Favre signed with Minnesota, Aug. 18, Startribune.com had more than 5.4 million page views, breaking the previous records of more than 5.3 million views for the day after the 2008 presidential election, and the nearly 4.6 million views the day after the I-35W bridge collapse in August of 2007. As team leader, Chris coordinates overall planning; leads the coverage for special Vikings sections published weekly during the season (four pages every Sunday, six pages on Mondays) and for non-print, multi-platform offerings such as Access Vikings; touches base with reporters; checks in at night via BlackBerry and pitches in on other, non-Viking coverage. Chris comes to his current position with broad sports writing and editing experience. He has been a team leader since 2005, and started at the Star Tribune in 1999 as a sports copy editor. Before the Star Tribune, he worked at the Duluth News Tribune for 15 years, including stints as that paper's college hockey beat writer and, eventually, as sports editor. He started his news career at the Mesabi Daily News in Virginia, Minn., after graduating with a Journalism degree from the University of Minnesota. Chris and his wife, Mary, live in Centerville and have five children - Zachary, 21, Moriah, 18, Hannah, 16, Elizabeth, 6, and Avamarie, 1. The two youngest are adopted from China. Pam and the night side Pam, 53, also finds her job engaging. As a night metro editor, she's in charge of breaking news at night, which involves supervising reporters, editing copy, monitoring the competition, and, essentially, "keeping all the trains on the track, keeping things moving to production." The topics and news stories covered are diverse. "Crime is a big part of it - what's heard on the police scanner, tornadoes... the 'bad things' that happen at night." As Pam explained, "We cover things fast at night." She added that she thrives on "surfing the deadlines. We have three waves of deadlines through the night." Plus, she said, given the reality of smaller staff sizes these days, "We do whatever needs to be done." Pam also brings extensive experience to her job. She has worked at the Star Tribune for more than 21 years in various news gathering roles. Before the Star Tribune, Pam worked as an editor and reporter for the Anchorage Daily News for two years and for the Duluth News Tribune for eight years. She holds a BA degree in Journalism and Anthropology from the University of Minnesota, and a master's degree in English from the University of Minnesota-Duluth. Pam, who has a 20-year-old son, Noah, splits her time between homes in Robbinsdale and Lake City. The road ahead As news veterans, the Millers have seen dramatic changes in the newspaper industry over the years, including the emergence of 24-hour news cycles and multi-media approaches to getting out the news. They remain hopeful about the industry's future. Pam and Chris agreed that, while the form in which people get their news and sports will continue to change, the need for and interest in that information will remain. "The gathering of news, whatever the delivery system, is still needed," Pam said. "I do have hope for print."

Sad news to share

We are very sorry to report that Richard Leiser, dad to Monty and Tanya, died of viral meningitis on Sunday. Our condolences to Monty and Tanya and to all who knew and loved Richard. Here is the newspaper obit from the Chippewa Valley Herald:

CADOTT, WIS. — Richard “Dick” Gordon Leiser, 55, passed away unexpectedly at home on Sunday, Nov. 1, 2009. Richard was born on Oct. 12, 1954, at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Chippewa Falls to Gordon and Fern (Werner) Leiser.

Dick graduated from Cadott High School in 1972 and later received his associate degree in marketing from Chippewa Valley Technical College. Music was an important part of Richard’s life. He formed his first band at the age of 12 when his mother sold her piano to buy him his first guitar. Richard played with many bands over the years and for 20 years he was the leader of the “Night Rider Band.” In 1998 Richard developed Clear Creek Estates Manufactured Home Community near Cadott. In 2004 he returned to the entertainment industry to perform as “Goodtimes DJ.” Richard proudly served as Cubmaster of Pack 65 in Cadott for six years while his son, Monty, was active in Cub Scouts. Richard was also musical mentor to Monty, helping him establish his band The Cragars. Richard was a member of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Cadott. He is survived by his son, LaMont “Monty” Leiser; his daughter, Tanya (Levi) Cook; his beloved grandchildren, Sonya, Maria and Perrin Cook; his brother, John “Jack” (Judy) Leiser; his sister, Rosemary (James) Guenther; a brother-in-law, Robert Nesvacil, and by many nieces, nephews, cousins and friends. He was preceded in death by his parents, Fern and Gordon Leiser, and a sister, Marilyn “Lynn” Nesvacil. Funeral services will be held at 11 a.m. on Friday, Nov. 6, at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Cadott with the Rev. Raymond Bell officiating. Interment will take place at Brooklawn Cemetery in Cadott at a later date. Family and friends may call from 4 to 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 5, at the Leiser Funeral Home in Cadott and also one hour before services Friday morning at the church. In lieu of flowers, the family asks for memorial contributions to St. John’s Lutheran Church, 215 E. Seminary St., Cadott, WI 54727 in memory of Richard Leiser.

Richard and Monty shared a love of music.

Richard, Cindi, Monty, Tanya and Levi on Tanya's 23rd birthday.

It's me, at 53

Your scrapblog editor, who was born on the Day of the Dead, turned 53 today. Where did the years go?

Halloween '09

Hope all you cousins had a happy Halloween. A couple photos... Minnesota State University-Mankato freshman Moriah Miller came home to party and visit her family, including darlin' little sisters Avamarie and Elizabeth. Uncle Joe looks pretty unfrightened of this friendly witch. (We don't think it's Mavis, but you never know.)