Heirloom Scrapbook Volume 8

Those Damn Snoop Sisters!!

First, let’s start with how we got the name The Snoop Sisters.  By Snoop Sisters, I mean myself and my sisters Pat, Kathy, Deb and Chris.

Debbie’s late husband Garry was at the casino one day.  He was spotted by someone from Forest who worked with my other sister Kathy.   Kathy happened to mention to Deb that Lori saw Garry at the casino and she wondered if he had had any luck.  A few days later Deb said to Garry, “Did you win any money at the casino the other day?”  Well Garry just about fell off his chair because he had no idea how she knew he was at the casino.  Then a few months after that, my sister Chris was home for the weekend and decided to go into Sarnia to play the late night bingo.  At the same time – Garry’s friend was skinny dipping in his neighbour’s hot tub and he ran out of refreshments so he decided to run across the road to his place to get a few cold ones. Meanwhile, on her drive home at 3am, just as Chris rounded the corner her headlights came upon a naked dude running across the road and Chris was amused even more when she realized she knew this was one of Garry's friends.  She then mentioned to Deb the next day how she stumbled upon this naked man and then when Mikey showed up at Deb’s a few days later Deb said, “Mikey, what are you doing running across the road in the middle of the night naked?”  The look on Mikey’s face was priceless when he looked at Deb and then Garry and had no idea what to say and Garry exclaimed, “Those Damn Snoop Sisters – I tell you, they friggin' know everything!  You can’t get away with a thing!”

And that’s how we got the name The Snoop Sisters.  To take it a little bit further, each year we enter a team in the Cancer Society’s Relay for Life as The Snoop Sisters and Friends so I thought it fitting that we all had nun costumes and I proceeded to get out that sewing machine. There have been a few years where we were unable to enter a Relay team and people were like… what – where’s the Snoop Sisters??  One day soon, I’ll have to get a proper Snoop Sister scrapbook page made. 

Bonnie, Chris, Kathy, Pat, Deb

What we tease the Snoop Sisters about: 

Snoop Sister Pat: For years, Pat always carried around a huge and heavy purse and if you wanted something, chances are - Pat had it in her purse.  We used to call her Monty Hall. (see how many of you get that one).  Pat also likes to partake in yardsale adventures. Years ago I taught Aqua-Fit classes and all us sisters were in the change room one night and I said, “I was talking to Tanya today and she asked if anyone had any white Christmas lights if we would dig them out for her for at her wedding, so that gives us a few months to gather them up” – Pat walks over to her change bag and pulls out a string of Christmas lights. The look on all our faces was priceless; I mean, who carries around strings of Christmas lights in July. Well, we all got into the laughter and Pat was trying desperately to explain that she was at a yard sale this past week, saw the lights and thought they would come in handy and her Aqua-Fit bag just happened to be in the back seat of the car when she threw the lights into it.   Ya, right Pat. 

Snoop Sister Kathy: Kathy is the baker of the family.  She enters her goods in the Forest Fair and winds up being the Bake Queen for the entire town.  On the flip side, she seems to get in a lot of fender benders.  By the time she was 22 her nickname was Crash.   I can’t tell you how many unfortunate fender benders she has been in, but her Angels are with her every single time.  One such accident she wasn’t AS lucky, but she IS lucky to be alive.  She was involved in a chain reaction accident in a snow storm on the 402 and was rear ended by a very large truck right into a very large truck.  She could see it coming and could do nothing.  I won’t repeat the word she uses each time she’s in a fender bender.  This accident however, left her with cracked wrist bones because she was holding onto the steering wheel when she was hit.  (Note: let go of the steering wheel if you see you are going to be hit) This caused her to have to change careers because she could no longer be a hair dresser.   We’re careful if we use the nickname Crash now… so we have to find something else to tease her about.

Snoop Sister Deb:  Deb is not a baker.  Let’s not forget the blog posting about the &*$%@$*%%& Cookies !! One of the first times Deb tried to bake cupcakes she put the cupcake papers on a cookie sheet and filled them with batter and then put them in the oven.   We laugh about it to this day.  I don’t care that she was only 13 at the time, it was still funny.  When Deb got married I had fun making one of her shower gifts; I taped cupcake papers onto a cookie sheet and gave her a box of cake mix. 

Snoop Sister Chris:  Chris can’t stand cotton balls. She absolutely freaks at the feel of them.  When we go to visit, we have to take all the cotton out of all her new jars of pills for her.   I said, ‘what the hell do you do when there is no one around?’  she said, ‘I have to get tweezers and it takes me a long time to get up the nerve to pull it out’.   When we were little, I used to fill the foot of her bed with cotton balls at night before she got into the room. 

Snoop Sister Bonnie: Growing up, Bonnie was gullible.  Everyone could talk me into anything.  I was forever the one getting out of bed to get someone else water once we were all settled in. “I sure do wish someone would get me a glass of waaaaaaatttttterrrrrr”   Come to think of it, it was that bugger Deb getting her way again. Deb and I shared the same bed and we used to take turns scratching each others backs with a hairbrush.  Every single night, Deb would say, “Let’s scratch each other’s back: I’ll do you first!”  and I fell for it every single time.

Ok, so now – back to the scrapbook.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to spend an entire year of your life working on a surprise scrapbook with the Snoop Sisters around? Exactly !!  So each time we decided to pull everything out to work on it, we had to make sure all the doors were locked and the blinds were pulled.  The girls were taught how to be on emergency lookout and Holly and Paige knew that if I hollered they had to come running and scoop up all the scrapbook stuff quickly before before any Snoop Sisters got in the house!   We almost got caught a couple of times, but we were able to keep the scrapbook a secret right up until the end. The top photo on this page was taken at my niece's wedding in 1997. The bottom left photo was taken at one of my grandparents anniversary's in the 70's and the picture on the far right was taken in the early 90's. The picture in the middle (and the further below) was the group photo we had taken when we went for our 'glamour shots'.

At one point while scrapping along, I said to Holly one day – I feel like my pages are all looking the same, we need to do something different.  I had never scrapbooked before so I really didn’t know what I was doing, but I knew I needed some fresh ideas.  So Holly and I decided to go to a scrapbook class; it only cost $4 per person and you could use all the tools they had to create different designs.  Just what we needed.  Well then Kathy found out that we were going to a class and she decided she wanted to go too.  Frig !!!  So, this is what I did to prevent her from attending the classes.  I called the instructor and told her what I was up to and that I was coming to her classes so I could get these surprise books finished on time for Christmas.  I told her my sisters name and I said, “No matter what – do NOT let my sister come to these classes.  Tell her they are full and then I will PAY you for her session so you don’t lose your money, but you CANNOT let her come here!”   The instructor thought that was just the funniest thing. 

We all love to cook and years ago, we gathered all our recipes and made a Snoop Sisters cookbook.  When we had our glamour shots done, we got a group photo and we used it for the cover of the cookbook.  Chris made framed copies for us all for Christmas and she even gave my daughters a copy.  So Niki has her picture of her aunts displayed on her shelf at her place and one night when company was over, one of her friends said, ‘Why do you have a picture of the Golden Girls?”  

Kathy, Pat, Chris
Bonnie and Deb

So that concludes the scrapbook as it stand thus far.  The hope was, that I would give everyone this scrapbook with empty pages at the end.  I thought my sisters would be so excited to help me scrap some days and we could design more pages together and we could continue with the saga.  Hopefully, there will be more stories to share in the near future.  I hope you have enjoyed my treasured heirloom - and more importantly - has it inspired you to create one of your own? 

Bonnie