Update on the family tree...

I've found a new, totally addictive hobby (as if I really needed another one)! I'm working on my family tree. A friend of mine got me started on it at www.ancestry.com, where it turns out they have a lot of old records digitalized and searchable. So you can see the actual 1920 federal Census record of your ancestors. This includes information on their address, who was living with them, their age and marital status, where they and their parents were born and their occupation. Plus you can find military records, draft registrations etc. in the person's own writing; and emigration and migration records--every time they entered the country during a certain time period.

It's like a jigsaw puzzle with no end! A month ago, I could only name four living relatives--my brother, my father, an aunt that I'm not even sure how she's related to me, and my mother's cousin. Now, I see that I could essentially find zillions of relatives. In fact, I think that there is a project out there to link as many people in the world as possibly through one world tree.

Every time I look up one relative, I find many more--their spouses, children, relatives of their spouses, etc. And the best part is that I've actually contacted some of these people. It's tricky, because the link between a name on official government records doesn't always match the name someone goes by. And there are often many people with the same name obviously. But I have managed to find three people who are related to me just by sending random emails to people that sound right! One of them had worked on a family tree for my father's side of the family, so that's given me so much more information. Another one is the son of someone who has worked on the tree on my mother's side, and I'm hoping to get all her information too.

I had a few misses too. People with the right names living in approximately the right place, but not related to me. They've happily shared with me their own origins too.

Along the way, I've found some mysteries. I can't find my grandmother anywhere. I've found the rest of her family, all living happily together, at a time when she should have been already born and still young enough to live there. But she's not there. I've found one gruncle (my dad's uncle) who was in a reformatory for boys at age 16--I don't know what he did to get in there!!

I seriously wish I could do this for my profession. It's like being a detective without the dangerous aspect. Following links and searching for clues. What fun!

First flirting...

Yesterday I took my 11-year old daughter and her friend to a local water park. I really hate swimming in those kinds of places, so I nestled down with a book under an umbrella, while they went off to ride down the water slides and ride a tube around on the lazy river. After they'd been gone for a while, I saw them in the pool in front of me, climbing onto a large floating plastic fish. A few minutes into it, a tall, gangly boy came over to them, and started trying to push them off the fish. At first, I thought he was a bully, picking on my little kids. After this went on for a while, though, with the girls clearly thrashing the boy the whole time, I realized that he wasn't a bully.

HE WAS FLIRTING WITH MY DAUGHTER AND HER FRIEND!!!

Not in that obvious teenager flirting way, but in that pre-teen flirting way, where they pretend they don't like each other. But those of us who've been there and beyond know that if you really don't like someone, you just ignore him. You don't go out of your way following them around poking them to tell them that you don't like them!

You know what? MY DAUGHTER AND HER FRIEND WERE FLIRTING RIGHT BACK!! They didn't even know it, but they were giggling and laughing and teasing and...well, basically...flirting!! I asked them about it afterwards, and they were clearly stunned to learn that the boy was flirting, and most certainly didn't know that they were flirting!!

Sigh...they're growing up way too fast.

Mathematics

As the school year ended in June, my children were each given a long math packet to work on over the summer. I think they're supposed to work on it a little each week, but we inevitably do it all in one day. That day arrived this week. To keep them busy while visiting my office for the day, I brought along the math packets, and they started in on them.

While you might assume that the point of these packets is to keep your memory refreshed on basic math skills, I am now convinced that the true point of them is to keep your memory refreshed about how much you hate elementary school math!!!

The sad thing is that my kids do not really hate math. They just hate the math as it is taught in school. In fact, we've always played math games all the time. Sometimes just as simple as me asking them to figure out how much three pounds of bananas will cost if bananas are $0.49 per pound. Sometimes I'll ask them tricky questions like "what three consecutive numbers add up to 75" or "what's 75 times 6" etc. Best of all are math board games. We often play Rummikub or Muggins . And they're really good at math too. It's a shame that since the time I went to school, the math instruction techniques really haven't improved all that much!

A morning at the dermatologist

Yesterday I took March to the dermatologist. We made the appointment about six months ago, at one of the only dermatologists in the area that was taking new patients. Since making the appointment, March has gone through at least two kinds of skin cleansing and toning products, trying to find one that doesn't break out her skin.

I should mention that she has beautiful skin, but that it tends to get a little oily and occasionally breaks out. This was really a pro-active (no pun intended) visit, because DH had very bad acne when he was a teenager, and she seems to take after him in a lot of physical ways.

In the doctor's office, March went into her "I'm a teenager and I can't speak out loud" routine. So I asked all the questions. Dr. Epps pretty much treated us like we were insane for even being there. She didn't seem to understand the concept of being prepared for acne should it strike in the future--despite the fact that it takes six months to get an appointment with her! Anyway, she looked at all of March's beauty marks (she's a beautiful girl if I do say so myself, so she has many beauty marks) and checked out her skin and thought everything looked quite normal. She gave us a prescription for an acne cream that March could use topically if anything ever springs up. It was really expensive--over $70 after insurance paid for part. She also suggested a horse shampoo Mane n' Tail for her thick thick hair.

I guess we're ready to enter the world of teenage skin now!

Webkinz Party

This weekend, my girls and I hosted a Webkinz party. We turned the entire house into Webkinz World. We drew huge posters of all the main characters and copied a bunch of the ads, and posted them all over the house. Then we made up versions of the games and Employment Office jobs. Finally, we cooked foods following recipes from Webkinz. Most were pretty normal, like PB & Banana. But one goofy one was a macaroni and cheese and hotdog sanwich.

Then we invited over March and June's friends. First, they "adopted" their Webkinz animals. They were given adoption certificates, and then given an address--a box in the hallway, labeled with their addresses. We had the W-shop, where they could buy decorations for their box, as well as lunch for themselves. So, the kids went around playing all the games, and collecting money (drawn to look like their animals) and then spending it decorating their houses and eating. They did a little "home and garden tour" to show off their decorated homes. Everyone had a fantastic time!

Rodents

This weekend, my daughter bought a new pet. It was a guinea pig. Now, I personally am not into rodents. But I guess guinea pigs are okay if you're going to have a rodent. So, my daughter bought a brown and white and black guinea pig. It squeaks and squeals whenever she tries to pick it up. It eats something called Timothy hay, as well as any fruits and vegetables that March wants to give her. So this now makes one dog, two cats and a guinea pig in our house. Oh, yes, and we're all females except for my husband of course.

First Week on Diet To Go

I'd really like to lose some weight. My Wii Fit tells me that I need to lose some weight, and my aching knees give me a more personal recommendation. I've lost weight before, lots of it. But I've also gained it back, in even larger amounts. And I'm just a wee bit obsessive-compulsive, so dieting makes me into a total nut-case. I start out okay, just cutting back on calories/fat/carbs/whatever here and there. But as the weight starts to come off more and more slowly, I start to obsess about what to cut next, what to eat next, when to eat next, etc. Pretty soon, I'm spending most of my day thinking about eating, dieting, losing weight, not losing weight, and I'm a nut-case.

So this time, I thought I would try a pre-packaged meal plan. Because I'll probably lose the same weight either way, but this takes all the thinking out of it. I did some research, and the plan that was the most flexible while still using real food with ingredients I recognize, was Diet To Go. My DH agreed to do this with me, because the Wii Fit tells him that he's overweight, and his back surgeon agreed. The Diet to Go plan has a 1200 calorie plan and a 1600 calorie plan, and you get to choose how many meals to purchase. I got myself the 1200 calorie breakfast, lunch and dinner plan. Not because I intended to restrict myself to 1200 calories, but because after I add in two cups of coffee with creamer, I'm up to 1400 calories, and then I have the freedom to add a piece of fruit or a small snack if I'm still hungry and stay around 1500. My DH picked the 1600 calorie meal plan (because he's a damned guy, which means his body just naturally burns more calories) for breakfast and dinner only. He's always moving around at lunch time and can't carry food around with him.

I've been on it for a week. First off, the Wii Fit tells me that I've lost 10 pounds, which would be great if I didn't know that 7-8 of it was water, but still, I'm satisfied. I definitely have not had to think about dieting or meal planning or anything else. I just pick up the food at a local gym, shove it into my refrigerator, and eat whatever they tell me to when they tell me to. It's that simple. The meals have been tastier than they've looked. A few I was truly scared to eat, and they ended up tasting just fine. I can't say too much has been delicious, except for the brownie, mentioned in an earlier post. But only one or two meals have been awful, so that's a pretty acceptable deal. One meal was really spicy and made me kind of sick. I'll remember to switch out of that one if it comes around again. I've made a few substitutions of my own, such as fresh carrots for mushy cooked ones, my own jelly instead of the cream cheese, etc.

So I'm definitely staying on it for another week. DH, on the other hand, decided that he didn't like it enough better than eating regular pre-packaged frozen foods, so he's ending his experiment. That's okay, it gives me the option in the future of switching to a different less flexible plan if I want.

Update on the newspaper

So we walked all over the neighborhood yesterday, delivering the kid's newspaper. While a few people brushed them off with excuses like "I only give money to my church" most of the neighbors were pretty nice and very impressed that the kids cared enough to raise money for a charity. They raised over $300!! And they haven't even given out all the papers yet. The owner of one of the businesses that agreed to advertise (the other being our local Starbucks) looked at the newspaper and started complaining about the size and visibility of her ad. Remember, we're talking about a five page little paper, written by two ten year olds and an eleven year old, raising money for charity!!! The ads were hand-drawn. And, here, this woman is griping and criticizing them because her ad wasn't big enough! Finally, she remembered herself, and told the girls how proud of them she was, but still...

Diet To Go is going pretty well so far. The food isn't too bad, and it's nice not to have to think about it. My husband isn't enjoying it quite as much because a) he usually doesn't have to think about food anyway, since I make it, and b) he keeps missing lunch because he's busy, which really doesn't work when your breakfast and dinner are pre-packaged to contain only around 1000 calories. According to my Wii, I've lost about 8 pounds, which is pretty typical for a first week of dieting. It will be interesting to see what happens the next few weeks. Lunch today was the first time the meal included a dessert (unless you count that canned peaches in pudding thing that I had the other day). It was a brownie. I didn't have especially high expectations from a diet pre-packaged brownie, but it was fantastic!!! Rich and chewy and gooey and chocolatey! It was almost too heavy to finish! Wow, I may just have to switch a few meals to that one next week!