Monday, June 30, 2014

EXCITE TEAM

Today is the day.  Todd and Brian should be arriving at the Chicago airport by now and checking in.  They fly from Chicago to South Korea which Is a 14 hour flight then to Cebu City , Philippines which takes another 4.5 hours.  With the time change it will be Tuesday when they arrive.

Thursday, June 26, 2014

They're Off

This morning at 5:30 am Bryce and I dropped Todd and Brian off at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.  We got them all checked in, bags sent off, and sent them off to TSA after we said our good byes.  Excited, nervous, anxious, and tired from lack of sleep but ready for this adventure.  Communication will be limited to Skype over the next two weeks. 
Can't wait to hear all their stories.
 

Sunday, June 15, 2014

Bonnie's Newest Occupation

Congratulations to Bonnie!   This weekend she passed her lifeguard certification test and will be working at the Leavenworth City Pool as well as the Cashmere City Pool.  She is going to be one busy gal this summer between life guarding, drivers Ed. And her DYW duties.

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Celebrating 21 Years

 
Today Todd and I celebrate our 21st anniversary.
We plan to go out tomorrow afternoon to celebrate at a restaurant in town, today is just to busy.  I have to work at the church, Todd is taking care of his dad, then I have to take care of Annette, and Todd has to do some pre-marital counseling.  Such is the life of Christian ministry. It is hard to carve out time for yourselves and the family.

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Garden

This is the face of one happy boy who has turned in all of his work.
 With school out of the way, my afternoons are free to focus on other things.  Today, I escaped to the property to work in my garden.  Since no one has gardened there in several years the ground is pretty weedy and rocky.  In fact, it looked like I was growing more weeds than vegetables. So I spent a few hours on my hands and knees crawling through the garden pulling up weed after weed. I also replanted my lettuce and spinach where none had grown up.  It is starting to look really nice.  Tomorrow I hope to attack the rows between the tomatoes and peppers.  Right now I have in my garden sweet peas, carrots, broccoli, lettuce, dill, onions, spinach, green peppers, chili peppers, jalapeno peppers, potatoes, 24 tomato plants, green beans, cucumbers, zucchini, and pumpkins.  I also threw in some sunflowers and flower seeds to make the garden look pretty.
While I was up at the property I thought I would show you what Todd has been up to on his days off. Every Monday, Todd and my father-in-law's best buddy, Danny, head off into the mountains to cut fire wood.  We figure we need four cords of wood for us and six cords of wood for my in-laws.  Todd generally brings down two full truck loads every Monday.  He then uses his dads splitter, which my boys are very thankful for,  to split up the wood and stack it.  He has about all we need right now.  He figures he will probably go up one more time, then it will be time to start hauling all of the wood to our house to stack in the shed.


Monday, June 9, 2014

Last Week

It is our final week of school. 
Brian is studying for his Physical Science exam and will take it this afternoon after his class meets.  He took the Geometry EOC at the end of May so he gets to opt out of his Geometry exam.  English had him submit three final projects, which are in.  His web design was submitted this morning and game design was submitted a few weeks ago.. That means....he is done!!! 

Bonnie turns in her genealogy project today which will complete her AP History class, a Pre-Cal test tomorrow and Psychology presentation as well and she should be done as well.  She took her Music Appreciation exam Saturday so that class is completed.

Bryce finished everything  last week except math.  He will be spending this rest of the summer finishing up his math so that he can start Pre-Algebra next year. 

I don't know about you, but my school brain needs to take a rest for awhile.  Now my focus can be on the garden, Bonnie's competition, the summer mission trip, and just managing the house.

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Geneology

Bonnie's opted to do her end of year history project on her family genealogy.  She is to trace her family line back to when her ancestors came to America.  Her project has prompted me to connect with my cousins and set up an ancestry.com account to map everything out.  As relatives have heard what I am doing more documents have been emailed to me giving me more information.  Bonnie informed me that she only needed to trace back ONE line and find only ONE ancestor that came over, NOT EVERY ancestor.  lol....

Genealogy is addicting.  I think my genealogist cousins would attest to that.  So my latest news was about my Meeks family tree.  It turns out that as you trace back their history you will discover that as they made the move from West Virginia to Indiana they spent some time in Kentucky.  While in Kentucky, Daniel Boone would frequently visit their home and spend time with them.  Cool! 

My plan this summer is to spend time taking all of the stories and info that my family is sending my way and putting it down on the ancestry website so that future generations will have it.  In fact, I think I will start sharing those stories here so that I will have it to share with family.

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Last CC

Brian is finishing his last Class Connects (CC or live class sessions) today!!!!  How this year is going to end for my dear boy is still up in the air.  What a challenge this year has been.  Do I regret it?  No....I don't.  Has it created a lot of challenges, sleepless nights, weeping and gnashing of teeth?  Yes...but I still don't regret the decision.  This year the virtual school has brought a lot of things to light about my son.  Fact...he is very bright.  Fact...he is very lazy.  Fact...he has had to face a lot of his insecurities and has found that he is capable to do the work required of him. 

The best part of this year was watching him thrive when it came to computers.  I loved watching him create his computer games.  I loved seeing him problem solve why his game or web pages didn't work out the way he wanted to.  I loved watching him spend hours figuring out to correct his mistakes and make things work right.  I see a future for him in the field of computers and really believe the technical school is the route for him in the next few years.

Monday, June 2, 2014

Respite

I have taken on another side job providing respite care for an elderly couple in our church.  That is the thing with older churches, you have a lot of elderly people that need help.  I have been praying about taking on extra work and this seemed to be the ticket.  It is twice a month for a couple of hours each time.

 Believe me, it is no walk in the park.  It is hard to see people grow old and not be able to take care of their basic needs anymore.  For this couple, they lost a daughter and granddaughter several years ago.  This tragic event had a devastating impact on the mother.  She lost the will to live.  She stopped living.  She is breathing, eating, and sleeping, but her will is gone.  She has given up on life.  All day she sits in her chair and does nothing.  The tv is constantly going but more for noise than entertainment.  She looks at the paper but couldn't tell you what it is about.  Yesterday, I spent four hours with this dear woman so that her husband could go to town for appointments and errands.  I cleaned house for them and prepared her evening meal.  I tried my best to engage her in conversations.  While dusting I would take down each picture of the shelf and ask her to tell me who the people were in the photos and get her to talk about them. 

More than ever I am thankful for my parents and their health. 

Geneology

Bonnie has an assignment for AP History.  She is to find out when her ancestors came to America and what was happening at that time in American history.  She figured that this should be an easy assignment since we have genealogist in the family who have already mapped everything out.  All she had to do was copy their work and put it on a poster board.  Ha Ha.... She had no clue how intricate a family tree is. 

Knowing the complexity of a family tree I contacted two of my cousins whose hobby is to trace our family lines to see if they could help Bonnie out.  My cousin, Travis, on my dad's side gave Bonnie a list that linked her pawpaw (my dad) to Stephen Hopkins who came over on the Mayflower.  Cool!  My cousin, Julie, has mapped out my mom's side of the family.  She gave me name after name going back to the kings and queens of Scotland, Vikings, the crusades, you name it.  What she didn't give me was dates and when all of these people made their way to America.  So I joined ancestry.com and began putting everyone's info into the family tree.  To help with the process I had a family newsletter that my Aunt Itsy, mom's oldest sister, had put together with family birthdates, death dates, marriages, etc.  Slowly, I am making my way back into the past and have found several lines of family members who have traveled from Scotland and England to America.  It seems that a few lines came to America right at the time of the American Revolution and fought for America. 

It has been quite a journey and I am finally getting a clear picture of my family roots.  My biggest revelation last night was who my Great Grandpa Jimmy was.  I have heard my mom and her sisters talk about Grandpa Jimmy but had no clue of who he was.  It turns out my mom's grandparents divorced and my mom's grandmother, Ollie O'Bryant Meeks, remarried James (Jimmy) Cranfill, i.e. Grandpa Jimmie.  Now I know....

Leaves are popping up all over my family tree on ancestry.com.  I have a lot of exploring to do this summer and I can't wait to find out more.