organizing still

OMG! i wish i had found these really helpful articles on documenting and research logs ages ago. but i didnt so now i am going through my family tree one person at a time and recording what information i have, where it came from, and what i still need. and this is going to be time consuming, but really needs to be done in case anyone ever wants to help or take over for me eventually. and it is good practice for me as i would really like to become certified at some point. today is halloween and i am very excited about it. i just love halloween. i can remember when my brother and i were little getting dressed up - the parade at school of everyone in costume - going around the apartments and getting candy and treats in our pillow cases. some memorable costumes - i liked being a gypsy, or witch and my brother did hobo a lot. we made due with what we had on hand and i think it made me appreciate the art of the costume more than the storebought ones would have. my mom was actually very creative and that helped a lot. i think in all the years my son has dressed up he has only had 3 store bought costumes - his first halloween when he was only about 9 months old he wore jammies with a skull cap i bought him, then one year he was sonic the hedgehog and one year he was jigglypuf from pokemon. i am so wishing that i had photos of the costumes through the years. but i still have the memories.

anyway, i hope you all have a great day today,

peace and luv,

laura

Happy Halloween Everyone

Yay, it is halloween. one of my favorite holidays. as promised yesterday here are some halloween photos from my neighborhood. some of the houses here go all out still, and that is really awesome in my opinion. honestly i kinda miss the days when my son was little and we would go trick or treating. oh well... halloween on a saturday night means fun times at the bar. i am going to try to make it out for a while and get some photos. but as with everything else in my life these days, it will depend on my pain levels tonight. anyway, i hope you enjoy the photos,

peace and luv,

laura

Halloween Eve

I really love fall. all the beauty of the leaves turning and falling, the colder weather bringing on the soups and stews that are comfort food, here in Washington the apples get nice and cheap and are perfectly ripe. and it brings so many memories - my grandma ate an apple every day, but she had to peel the skin off due to her dentures, so i always got to eat the extra apple skins. my mom making soup - chicken, turkey, beef and making that pot of soup last several meals. home made chili - my grandma's recipe but my mom making it - with spaghetti in it. i don't know why that is just how it is made :) this year i am working on a cookbook to give out to the family for Christmas gifts and the chili with spaghetti in it is one of the recipes in it from my aunt judy. i am adding my grandma's meatloaf - when i make it i make a double meatloaf so that the nest day we can have sandwiches as well as left over meatloaf chunked up makes for great meatballs in spaghetti! and now that Halloween is just about here i am starting to plan for thanksgiving, even knowing that i will probably not be at this apartment. i just love cooking for my friends and family. and the left overs the next day are unbelievable!! anyway, until next time,

peace and luv,

laura

Halloween Eve

I truly love halloween! not only is it a day to be someone you are not and live that fantasy for a few hours, but the kids are just soooo cute!! a friend down the street posted a photo of his new baby in a pumpkin. so darling! so today i posted a few photos of pumpkins from around the neighborhood. i have some other photos to post tomorrow and then sunday or monday i will post photos of halloween night. as for me, today is a good day. the landlord spent 4 plus hours replacing my hot water heater yesterday. he had to completely move a pipe that had been installed after the hot water heater and blocked it from coming out. it was not fun - for anyone involved. so we didnt have dinner until after 9 due to the hot water heater being under the cupboard behind the stove so no stove access until he got done. but it is done now and hopefully it will be the last issue we have here before we end up moving.

anyway, i hope everyone has a great halloween weekend,

peace and luv,

laura

family tree on hold today

my body is sore today, so i am going to just take today off. feeling more creative so will be playing in photoshop today i think. story for today - more of a reminiscence - i remember when i was little and we would go trick or treating, we got apples, popcorn balls, candy, pennies - and it was safe. then some idiot(s) had to go and ruin it by putting razor blades into apples and poison in candy - and yes i remember when that all happened. putting all parents on guard. only knock on doors of people you know, hard candy is the safest, mom has to check all the candy before you can eat any of it, and even going to the police station the day after to have the candy x-ray'd just to be safe. i miss the "safe" days of my childhood.

anyway peace and luv

laura

hi all,

well i got through my initial DSHS appointment yesterday morning - have to go to the dr and have a full physical next tuesday and have the dr fill out a lot of paperwork to send back to DSHS. Then went for my 2 MRI's yesterday evening. my body is so sore today from being on my back and still for almost an hour. i tend to wiggle a lot due to the pain in my back and knees so staying still so as not to ruin the images was hell. not to mention the fact that i am not a fan of enclosed spaces. but i lived through it and now it is done. hopefully we can go over them when i go back on tuesday. i also have to get my paperwork in for social security disability. and figure something out about housing. but today - i am resting at least through the morning.

here is a photo from walking the other day - it kinds emotes the way i feel today.

peace and luv

laura

getting re-organized

well, with me starting my descent into disability world, i should have time to update here regularly. I am learning a lot about intensive digging due to my subscribing to a newsletter called casefile clues [ www.casefileclues.com ] he talks about getting documentation I just really had never thought about. and tells how he comes to conclusions on things and such. I am greatly enjoying the learning every week. so, I have decided I need to reorganize my genealogy stuff. I am going to have a file for each and every person, it will include any photos I have of that person, documentation I have for them, and how they are related to either myself or my son - i have not decided yet on that part. this will also let me know what else i need for people as well as make sure i am not looking for something i already have. the first part of all this is going to be creating a folder for the main branches of my family - Johnson, Shackelford, Hoffmann, Wetzel - that is my father's side, Whitehouse, Kelley, Burns - that is my mother's side, Moberley - that is my son's father's family, Friend, McGlasson, Runion, Tritton - that is my little sisters natural family, McClurg, Whitlow - that is my little sisters adopted father and her stepbrother's mother, Gilliland, Chapman, Forbes - that is my little sisters husband's family, Gomez, Hunter - that is my nephew's mother's family. I think that is the main catagories. then it will just get more and more detailed from there. I will also be recording all documentation in a spreadsheet so that i will have it all in one easy place to look. this is a huge undertaking but it needs to be done, this is how we learn :) I have already discovered - just in talking to my dad that I dont have some documentation on my grandparents. I have recruited him in looking for the documentation for me. it will give him something to do. he could not figure out a hobby to keep him busy in his retirement so he got recruited. umm story for today ~~~ kinda storied out today. if i think of one later i will post it, if not, tomorrow is another day.

peace and luv,

laura

today is the first day of the rest of my life

today is the day after the dr appointment where I admitted that I need to go on disability. today is the day I got approved for MRI's on my back and right knee to see what we are dealing with. today I called DSHS for an appointment to sign up for disability. today is the beginning of me getting better or at least bearable with the pain. tomorrow I have my appointment with DSHS. tomorrow I have my MRI's. tomorrow I talk to my landlord as I will have to move to low income apartments. but today - I am at peace with my decision.

here is a photo I took Saturday on my way to Bremerton. I love the fog. I love the fall. I do not love how I can barely walk as our weather keeps changing from sunny to rainy and cold. my knees are just not taking it well this year at all. I am going to really work on writing in here daily what I am doing and going through - since dr's scare me to death and this is all going to be a lot of dr's. but this way I will have it to look back on and know it is just one more aspect of my life that I have gotten through.

Peace and Luv,

Laura

so many "new" relatives

i cannot believe how many cousins and second cousins i have on facebook. and how many have accepted my friend invites. i now have photos to put in my family tree of almost all my cousins and still need to look through photos on several people's pages to see if i can find the other family members in them. and talking to them all and getting to know them - and showing them all the information i have on the family tree. very exciting for me anyway. i also redid my computer over the weekend so it is running so nice and fast again. i just had so much on it and could not remember what was for what and what i could remove anymore. so my family tree is not really getting any bigger but my family that i know and am in contact with is getting huge!! story for today - when i was in high school at ingraham high in seattle (i went to 5 different high schools) my friends and i used to hang out on "the ave". for those of you not from here that is university way ne in seattle near the university of washington between about ne 40th and ne 50th streets. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ave ) who knew there was a wiki out there on it??? anyway, we hung out on "the ave" and were locally known as "ave rats" - teens - usually rocker to goth - that have nothing better to do than sit on a wall and watch the people with jobs scurry around. so a lot of times we would go to see the midnight movies at the neptune theater - usually b movies that were old - but they usually showed 2 movies so it got you in out of the night for about 3 - 4 hours and then it was only about another hour till the busses were running again and we could get home. this one night we decided to go see the midnight shows - it was eraserhead ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eraserhead ) and freaks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freaks ). i have to tell you - i still vividly remember the movies - and i still have nightmares with bits and peices of them in my dream state. who knew that old movies could be so disturbing???

anyway, that is enough of that for today :)

peace and luv

laura

trip to bremerton

ok, so this is a photo of seattle - but it is from on the ferry going into bremerton. i have always and will always love how the seattle skyline looks from the ferry. so i went to bremerton saturday to see if i could find josh and katrina. they live with her parents but are always out and about - and dont have a phone so that i can contact them. well we (me, my sister and her hubby) got there only to find out that josh is in jail and katrina was not home - probably out trying to get into the jail and see josh. so we chatted with her parents (the first time i met them) for a while then headed out to help david find his costume as they had a party saturday night as well as one on halloween. by the time i got home i could barely move. jesse met me at the bus stop with the walker, but once i reach a certain point the walker doesnt really help much. so it is monday and i am out from work once again (had the flu three days last week) to go see the dr and talk about pain management and disability. also to get a note for work if i am going back at all. i really want to say i am still able to work, but the few days i have done have been pure hell for me. it is time to admit that i need disability and just get everything set up and be done with it.

anyway, will know more later today,

peace and luv

laura

happy me

well i have been out sick from work for two days now with what seems to be the flu. of course everyone including the dr says just stay at home. so since i can only lay in bed for so long before it starts hurting my back/legs more than usual, i decided to try to find cousins and second cousins on facebook. i mean it couldnt hurt right? so i found a lot of them and have recieved friend add's from 4 of them so far. 2 cousins on my dad's side, a second cousin on my dad's side and a second cousin on my mom's side. hopefully more will roll in. it is interesting seeing photos of people that i have either not met or not seen since i was like 10 and then it was only a day or two. so - usually my adventures are more in the death area of the family tree but this week it is the life area and i am really excited to get to know my relatives that live far away. so story for today --- my grandpa jim, my dad's dad, was a great and wonderful man. i am sure he had his faults, but living 2000 plus miles away from him, i didnt really get to see them. anyway, when he was about 70 he rode a motorcycle from florida up to kentucky or maryland. alone. and i remember when he told me about it i was angry at him for being risky like that. not that he rode a motorcycle, but that he didnt have at least one riding partner on a long trip like that. i mean you never know when an accident will happen and it is best to ride with a friend. he passed away a few years later, and i still miss him and my grandma edna. we might not have gotten to see each other very much in my life, but we did write quite often.

anyway, that is it for today,

peace and luv,

laura

busses are fun

so going back to work for me means a lot of time spent either riding or waiting for busses. and while I know most of t friends don't understand how I can live without a car, having never had one I don't miss it. and you can meet such interesting people on the bus. whether you want to or not lol. most people just avert their eyes or read - pretend they are alone on a bus. but then there are the colorful people that talk to anyone or the drunks that cannot shut up even though everyone is avoiding eye contact. and then there is usually a group of regulars that will sit together and talk about their life and work and just stuff. I always like to just sit back and watch the people. anyway posting from my phone on the bus - peace and luv - laura

fall colors

some pretty fall colors for today. not sure what this all looks like now that we have had several days of wind and rain but perhaps since it is not raining today i will go check it out.

peace and luv

laura

sometimes you learn something ....

that you deep down already knew. it just dawned on me that a "sister" from my family due to being in foster care with my sister's parents is actually blood related....... she is my sister's adopted brother's kid's mother's half sister. ok did everyone get all that?? :) today i am sharing a photo of me, my brother and my cousins in 1971. from left to right Jeff 9 years old (cousin), Johnny 2 years old (cousin), Carolyn 7 years old (cousin) holding Jeremy 1 year old (brother) and Laura 3 years old(me). we all grew up together spending lots of vacation time together and I have such fond memories of going to my aunt and uncle's house and their cabin. so instead of a story today life lessons: what i learned from Jeff - if you are on a tall guys shoulders duck when going through a doorway even if they say no you are clear. what i learned from Carolyn - everyone needs a makeover sometimes even barbie. what i learned from Johnny - sometimes being older has it's advantages. what i learned from Jeremy - sometimes being younger has it's advantages. something i hope we all learned together - family is forever.

well that is it for today,

peace and luv,

laura

Finally the weekend!!

ok i cannot seem to load photos today - i think it is my internet connection!! anyway i will try back later. the rest of my week went ok at work. the more i work the more i think i need to apply for disability. this is really hard on my back and knees and my headaches are coming back with vision loss. so...... decisions to be made. still waiting on my nephew's baby to be born - due date is in 13 days so if she is a day late she will be a halloween baby!! :) that would be awesome - although even knowing she would have been early it would have been so cool if she had been born on my mom's birthday - but halloween is my aunt's birthday. anyway - off to my genealogy blog. then family tree stuff today.

peace and luv,

laura

ok so even every other day seems to be too much

work has been kicking my ass. i have basically just gotten up worked come home looked at my facebook/myspace and emails and gone to bed. it is just really hard on my body - a lot harder than i thought it would be. i really thought i would be ok as long as i had that 8 plus hours between my busses and waiting for busses. but i am not. so looking into disability at this point is going to be my best option i believe. i know that a lot of my family does not approve of my "using" disability. however, like the one commercial says - you have paid into it all your life and if you now cannot work you are entitled to it. anyway enough of that. so i have been looking into getting certified as a genealogist. i think that would be awesome, but i have a long way to go first. in the meantime i can still professionally do other peoples family trees just as an uncertified genealogist. family tree stuff.... not so much as i have been working and then sleeping and that is about it. story..... hmm i think i am gonna pass on doing a story today, perhaps i will come back later today and put one on here.

peace and luv

laura

work is kicking my ass!!!

so yeah work is kicking my ass. my knees are hurting and my back is killing me. i am home today because i had a migraine with vision loss - another sign of my back/neck hurting. so i am catching up on blogs and art and such. i talked to my sister today and we are going to go look at a low income apartment complex in port townsend this weekend since they dont have a wait list. i am thinking disability is what my only option is at this point since i couldnt even make it through week one - but i have not quit my job, nor am i planning to - yet. i will see what happens the rest of this week and into next week. so today photos from mt olivet cemetery in renton, wa. i am loving my cemetery explorations right now.

this is just a beautiful angel

a rosary and something that is now broken

really old headstones with roots moving them (where the zombies come out)

peaceful tree over a memorial bench

ever look down and see your own name????

well that is all for today

peace and luv

laura

time keeps on slippin.............

ok so not everyone is old enough to know that is a steve miller band song - go on look it up lol so i have been getting little bits here and there from my stepsister about the friend part of the family tree. so i have been busy researching some random members as well as adding the new information. also, it seems that one person that was a match on ancestry.com is not the correct person so now i need to research this person more. i also got a 6 month contract position and will have to put this back to hobby instead of spending so many hours a day on it as i have been. but that is ok. a job is a good thing. so story for today........ hmmm........ when my son was little we had wonderful next door neighbors. mark and michelle and their two girls amanda and kaylee. it worked out very nicely that we all got along because at that time i decided i was ready to go from being a stay at home mom to working again. i worked an early shift at my job because most of our customers were in texas not washington and my mom worked a later shift at her job because she was a night person and that worked better for her. so we only needed someone to sit with jesse for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evenings. michelle volunteered to do this and i didnt have to pay because we bartered - she watched jesse during the week (and any school holidays) and i watched their girls on saturday nights so that they could have date night. so during the summer they were going camping and wanted to take jesse. it was really the first time he had been away from me for any amount of time. but i let him go. so four days later they bring him home and pretty much he hops out, they kinda throw his stuff out and back up -- waving and saying out the window we will talk to you in a while. i thought they just really wanted to get home and shower - i know i would have since i am not the camping kind. but no, they knew that they brought jesse home with a skinned up leg. he was skateboarding on a gravel hill and crashed and burned!! so i took him in the house and disinfected him, called mark and michelle - who explained they knew i would freak out since i was so over protective lol - and got the story. looking back, not a big deal. but at the time i was totally freaked out!!

well that is it for today, have a lot to do today since it is my last day not working really. i will do my best to keep up the blog, but as we all know too well in this economy work comes first.

peace and luv.

laura

happy birthday mom

so yesterday i was just too busy to get to this. i got a 6 month contract job and had to go fill out all the paperwork for it in seattle and decided to go to the metro place and get my monthly pass and happy me it turned out that i could not only get october but november too. now i am good on the bus until december. so being raised with a catholic mother and grandmother and knowing my guilt just too much :) you get several photos!! also, today would have been my mom's 63rd birthday. i miss her so much still but am back to where i feel i can not only live life but enjoy it again. so, with this job starting next week, my blogging will have to move to the evenings and i might not be able to keep it up daily, but at least every other day i think i can handle.

hope you enjoy,

peace and luv,

laura

images are in reverse order of how they happened :)

the light bar from the police car at the transit center 10/8

pigeons roosting at the transit center 10/8

fall colors reflected in a window 10/8

the space needle - from outside where i did my paperwork 10/8

the moon still out at mid morning 10/8

fall colors 10/8

fall colors 10/8

perfect sunset 10/7

accident by my house 10/7

accident by my house 10/7

more info and more info

more and more info is trickling in from my step sister. i need to get it all added and have a list of names that i need to research to find out who they are - they signed the funeral book things from my step dad's parents funerals. also, with fall in full force here in the seattle area - i am thinking forward to thanksgiving and who to invite and what to make. it is one of my favorite holidays since it gives me a chance to cook for those i love. i also love christmas and halloween, so we are fully into my favorite time of year. so be prepared for holiday stories - and today will be a halloween one. the year i was almost 11 - so 5th grade - halloween was a big deal for us kids. free candy!! dressing up at school!! and free candy!! so this year we did the school trick or treat, then at dusk we went all over the apartments - back in those days you could take popcorn balls and caramel apples from families you knew - then my best friend's dad took us up through the tiffany park area - that was all the houses near our elementary school and somewhat into fairwood - the higher income houses near our school. then he decided it would be a year to remember - he had me and my best friend and my brother change our costumes and took us back to all the houses we had just hit!! all three of us ended up with our pillow cases full and then some. i swear we were still eating halloween candy all that summer! that was an awesome halloween!

Peace and luv,

Laura

fall spider webs

here in the greater seattle area in the fall there seem to be an abundance of spider webs. and while i am very scared of spiders, i do love that natural artistry of their webs. so here are a few shots of webs i have taken the last month.

peace and luv

laura

happy tuesday everyone

I know i forgot to post yesterday, i was busy working on adding new information to the family tree. we got some information from a step-sister on the Friend family line in my extended tree. I also got a little more information from my dad on people in his extended family. so i have been very busy researching and adding and then researching some more. I also did a quickie version of a family tree for a friend who is coming up to visit me friday evening. when her mom passed away i offered to get her a good running start on her family tree. so that is done, i just need to get copies of the photos i found and get all her stuff into pdf files and add it to a disk for her. and as for my family tree. i exported it into excel yesterday and will be adding things like census info, birth and death records, addresses found for that person, anything and everything that i have ammased these last couple of years so that i can transfer it into an access database to really manipulate it and work with it. so yes, i have been very busy. hmm story for today. i cannot think of one right off the top of my head today, so family background. my mother and father had two children. my brother and i. yes i mention my sister a lot on here. she is actually my step sister. when i was 14 and she was 5 (there are 9 1/2 years between us) her father married my mother. through this union i not only got her as a sister, but her step brother's as brothers. my step father also brought out two of his four children from missouri - they are my step sister and my dearly departed step brother. when her dad and my mom divorced he remarried and had two more girls - my now adopted sisters - who are just a little older and about a year younger than my son. they now have babies of thier own and with their father long since passed away and their mother passing away just after my mother i feel i can be helpful to them in raising their children. my brother has a son, who is expecting his first child this month. so, when i say i am researching my extended family tree....... it gets very extended. my mother married twice, my father married four times (so far) and i have a step brother and step sister from two of those marriages, my step father married five times and had children with all but my mom, my little sisters mom married three times, her adopted father (her step father adopted her as a teen) married three times -- so keeping all this straight and getting everyone included so that my son knows how we all interweave as a family...... that was the start of my family tree research.

anyway, i am off to work more on my tree,

peace and luv,

laura

feeling guilty about not posting daily

but sometimes life gets in the way of blogging :) so today you get five photos.

I dont know what kind of plant this is but it looked really cool so I photographed it.

Rhodie leaves changing colors for the fall

rain on my kitchen window

storm clouds in the sky

if looks could kill my son's cat would have me dead at least once a day. this was actually taken as she layed herself between my laptop and the wall on my desk.

I hope y'all enjoy the photos,

peace and luv,

laura

brick wall down!!

i finally broke through a brick wall in my family tree. my uncle's parent's were from Germany and Scotland. and i finally broke through on his mother's family in Scotland. spent several hours putting all the census info into a spreadsheet so i can make sure i not only have all the family members but that none are duplicated - like being elizabeth on one census and lizzie on another one. i know this is my extended family but it still excites me. i will probably spend a good portion of my weekend working on this line. oh and i offered to do some research for a friend too. need to get her an email form out so she can fill it out and get it back to me. she will be up visiting next week and would like to have some stuff to give/show her. anyway, story time -- when i was little, i wanted a pet. we were not allowed to have pets where we lived, so it was a hamster here and a guinea pig there. but i wanted a cat or dog. but to fill the void i would bring home wild animals and claim they were "pets". i grew frog eggs into tadpoles and frogs, i brought home garter snakes, tried to rescue the tent caterpillers from the death spray one year. but i think the best was the time i decided i wanted a baby raccoon. our apartments were surrounded by woods back then so we saw quite a bit of wildlife. and being spring most everything had babies. well this one mama raccoon had four babies, and i felt that she would not miss one if i could catch it, and being a baby i could tame it and have it as a pet. so i watched quietly as mama and her family went into the dumpster to forrage, quietly put down a trail of sugar cubes - i loved them so raccoons should too right?? i then went up to the middle porch and waited. well yeah, the babies followed that sugar trail right into my apartment, but before i could get back in and shut the door to pick my new pet, the mama flew into the apartment and hit the door just right so that it slammed shut. and it was locked. and i didnt have a key. and my mom was down at her friends house way in the nest enterance of the apartments. so i run down to get the key, have to explain why i need it, run back and open the door to this horrible screeching, and white powder flying everywhere. so, as my mom catches up with me, the raccoons all run out covered in white powder. she looks around at the collateral damage and very quietly says "i will be home at 5. my house will be clean. my baking supplies will be re-stocked. and you will be waiting for me" i knew i was in soooo much trouble. so i called my best friend and partner in crime, explained what happened, and she took my babysitting money and ran to the store to buy flour, sugar, brown sugar, powdered sugar and bring them back for me. and i cleaned like the devil was riding my back to take me to hell if it was not clean. when she got back from the store she helped me clean. and it was done and everything put away and me sitting at the dinner table waiting when my mom came home at 5. yes, i was grounded. yes, it sucked. but i never tried to catch a baby raccoon again!! :)

hope you all have a great weekend,

peace and luv,

laura

TGIF

yes even though i am technically unemployed fridays still excite the hell outta me. this week has been pretty rough personally for me. had some pretty harsh decisions to make about family members and how i am going to let them be part of my life or not. on the plus side - tension/drama breed creativity in me. this is a family friend's newest member. she is just so cute i had to do some play with her.

anyway off to finish my art for the week, post to my websites, do some promoting, and look for a job still.....

peace and luv,

laura

excitement...........

so i just subscribed to a weekly newsletter that should help me with more in depth research for my family tree. i just got the issue from last week in my email and cannot wait to dig into it. hopefully i will get a lot of insight into what i need to be looking for not only on my brick walls but just in general. if you are interested in this newsletter you can subscribe at www.casefileclues.com today only (oct 1 2009) he is offering a 10% discount on a yearly subscription. so off to read, absorb, and research.

peace and luv

laura

Oops forgot to post yesterday

so today i will give you 2 pictures to look at. the first one is my friend's baby's feet in her hands. there is something just so perfect about baby feet!!

the second one is my son's friend (my second son)'s mom on her wedding day last week. she just looks so in love in this photo.

anyway, i hope as always that you enjoy the photos,

peace and luv

laura