Thursday, November 26, 2009

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone

Well here it is thanksgiving. not much happening on the family tree - mostly working on the organization of all that i already have so that i will know better what i need to work on. it is very time consuming, but in the learning process of life, i have learned to keep things organized as i go instead of going back to do it when i have 3000 people to deal with!! so that being said i will just tell my story of the day and then be off to do whatever it is i do all day lol :) so when we were little thanksgiving was usually at my aunt sue's house. they did two long tables in an l shape as well as an extra table but it was not a kids table cuz i was usually at the long table by my mom. and while i cant say for sure what all was served, i do know it was controled chaos feeding the whole family like that. and i do remember that the deserts were always in the kitchen until after dinner was done, cleared, cleaned up after, and if you were good you could sneak some of the dessert before it was time and with all us kids running around no one ever got caught cuz it was too hard to prove who did what lol. and during food intermission - the time between dinner and dessert - all us kids would go into the basement and we could play with the huge train set or the hamsters - their cage was huge!! but it was all fun and only once a year :) and sometimes i miss the innocence of it all. but would not trade my life for anything - no matter how down i get or how dark things seem it is still my life and i am thankful for all of it.
peace and luv
laura

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone

Well everyone today is thanksgiving - day of feasting in order to celebrate what we are thankful for. We will be feasting tomorrow as Jamee and David already had plans for today with their good friends. But I did want to touch on what today is really supposed to be about - thankfulness. Today I am thankful for - my family, my friends, a rood over my head, my relative health, that I will be seeing a better dr than in renton, that i hopefully will have my own apartment soon, that my cats are adjusting well, that my best friend is only a half hour away now, that i am getting my stress level down to something that can be considered normal, that crowded stores here are nothing compared to renton/seattle :). so as you can all see i have a lot to be thankful for. my plans for today are to spend some time with my family before they head out to their friends house, do some prep work so that cooking tomorrow will not be so crazy, try to get all the sides done so that they just need heated up. should be an awesome 4 days together :) today's photo is of a deer in my sister's yard. my cat really cannot figure out what kind of dog the deer are but it is funny to watch her when they are in the yard. there were three the other day, but my sister says dont be shocked if there are like 6 or so out there. so to everyone that has touched my life or mine has touched theirs,
peace and luv this holiday season,
laura

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

killing time in a library

one of my favorite hobbies!! you dont need a card to sit in there and read or do research. so yesterday i had several hours to kill in port townsend so i ended up at the library since it was threatening to get really icky outside and i had been doing outside stuff for a while anyway. so i headed to the library. my original plan - find a book i know i own and a comfy chair and read the windy afternoon away. what i ended up doing was heading to the genealogy section and grabbing a book - again was just gonna read - and taking several pages of notes. a bunch of new websites to check out and some organizational tips. and before you know it it was almost time to go. it is good to know that i can do that on days i am there with no way back to sequim until i get into an apartment in port townsend. if only they had a napping room!! :) so today - if i am working on family tree stuff i have new stuff to look at and look into. YAY!! but not sure if i am gonna be working on it today. and no story today - sorry, just not feeling it today.
peace and luv,
laura

new beginings and fresh starts

so - technically yesterday was the new begining and all but was not on the computer yesterday so there you go. today i just have a few phone calls to make - dr appt, getting my prescriptions transferred stuff like that. so thinking about where i go from here, how i get there, stuff like that. oh and making a list for shopping for thanksgiving dinner. we will be having it on friday since jamee and david had plans with friends already on thursday. so jesse and i will have some time to think and talk and they will have some time away with their friends and all. but all in all so far so good - we are all just still tired and adjusting - and i think all praying i can get into an apartment really quick!! i know the cats are not really liking living in our room, but they have to for now. and they will get over it. today's photo is my cat baby - she was not impressed with something jamee did to her so i took a picture of the face she was making at me.
well i am outta here for today,
peace and luv,
laura

Thursday, November 19, 2009

raining in seattle?

ok so the seattle area has been slam-bassted with storms this week. it is thursday and we have had 3 wind/rain storms since monday. now here in my renton apartment my power has been safe, but i know after moving to port townsend my power will be in jeapordy every time we have a wind storm. but it will be worth it to be able to see the water as often as i want all year round. but it is just another adventure in this thing we all call life. so here are a few photos from the bremerton water park (not sure what it is actually called). it is behind the naval museum - which i want to check out one day - and you get a great view of it from the ferry while waiting to head out to seattle. it is really kewl to see the random water fly up and crash down. anyway, off to work hard on the family tree organization - still need boxes so packing is on hold today. and also today i need to head to the store and get stuff to cook for early thanksgiving dinner on sunday :) so i hope everyone has a great day,
peace and luv,
laura




Wednesday, November 18, 2009

been working on organizing

it is funny how as you start organizing you start with someone else's idea on how you should document things and note things. then as you go you realize you want to add this and take off that so some things look different from beginning to end. but it is all part of life and life is constant learning and change and being able to adapt to it. so - 100 plus people into creating individual files for all 3000 people in my tree i am starting to realize that the basic form i saved is great, but i need to add some other things to the files, such as family group sheets for each person, timelines, as well as the record that shows what i have found and what i still need to research. also, will be gradually adding copies of documentation that i have available to me and photos so that i can click on any one persons file and see everything i have on them. this is a huge undertaking and gets bigger daily as i go to add a person and realize they have ten hints on ancestry.com which in turn add more people to the tree..... but it is all good. when i am done i will be able to gather my documents and get them in order for several books - a whitehouse book, a johnson book, a moberley book for my son's father's lines, a runion book for jamee's mom's line, a friend book for all my step siblings, a mcclurg book for those step siblings, and on and on and on lol thank god i can still do this even with my pain - the difference from doing data entry/research for a job is that when i have a bad day i dont have to work on it, or i can take 4 hours and go lay down and take a pain pill. whereas with a job i get fired for missing too much work cuz i am in too much pain to be there. so now you are all caught up on what i am working on lately. story for today???? when my brother and i were little - like i was 5 and he was 3 i think - we lived in yesler terrace in seattle. these apartments are low income townhouses with little yards. so this one day my friend maria was over and we were playing inside probably because of rain. my mom was sleeping since she worked nights and we decided that we wanted to play snow. so we looked around the house and decided that the flour looked a lot like snow when we threw it so back upstairs to the playroom we headed. we threw 10 pounds of flour all over the room, all over each other, all over everything before my mom realized we were too quiet with random giggles. i honestly dont know how hard it was to clean i just remember mom washing my hair about 5 times trying to get all the flour out of it. it was one of those situations that at the time she was livid but as time flew by she realized the humor of it all.
hope you all have a great day,
peace and luv,
laura

ok ranting for the day

Ok, so i am surfing the web this morning and come across this article about how people who own their own homes are being told that they cannot/should not hang their laundry in their own yard. this is one of the major reasons i have no desire to ever own a house. if it is mine - and by mine i mean i have paid or am paying over 200000.00 for it - i should be able to do as i please with it so long as it is not unsanitary. i dont think that other people in my neighborhood should have the right to say what i can do in my yard - if i want to go over the top for christmas with lights and what have you then i will. if i want to hang my laundry out to dry and save a little part of the environment then i will. if i want to have a full blown graveyard in my yard for halloween i will. these things do not bring down the value of my home or yours. they show that i love my home as well as my holidays. so i for one will never be looking to own a home. if i have to abide by all these rules i might as well stay in an apartment where at least i dont have to pay extra for getting things fixed - like leaks, roofs, broken windows, blown hot water heaters.
ok rant done - my photo is looking back at bremerton on the ferry.
peace and luv
laura

Monday, November 16, 2009

so much to do today

so today i have to call uhaul and reserve my truck, i have to call the dr and see if i can bump my appointment up to this week instead of next week, i need to call cable, i need to call the electric company, and if i dont have paperwork from dshs in the mail today i need to call them too. so, i am on here posting :) i will be moving on the 28th, probably into my sister's place until i can find an apartment that is low income - but cant really look for that until i have my paperwork from dshs saying how much i will be getting monthly. it is kinda a catch 22. in the meantime, i am getting what i can packed up and will be all ready when the 28th rolls around. also need to repost my stuff for sale on craigslist. i know someone will pay for my table, my big tv and entertainment center, and my desk. the rest i will post for free next weekend - and hopefully have places for people to sit and eat on sunday lol. so my photo today is from the 7th on the ferry back from bremerton. this is the bridge going from one side of bremerton to the other with the foothills of the olympics and clouds in the background. hope you enjoy,
peace and luv
laura

Friday, November 13, 2009

friday the 13th

so, today is friday the 13th. i dont know why people get weirded out about it. i have been in a lot of pain this week, and today is no different. just happy cuz getting boxes and so i should be able to get all packed this weekend. just need my approval from dshs so that i can get my ass out of here. i hope that i can get into an apartment really quickly. i dont want to be a burden on my sister for any longer than i have to. but i cannot switch doctors or even call about apartments until i get my approval. and while i am waiting on that i am sitting in an apartment that i have been evicted from. no - no stress there. hopefully with the high blood pressure meds my blood pressure will be back at a normal so that i wont have to stress that too. anyway, enough of that, here is a photo i took in the pouring rain through the window of the ferry. it is the smith tower in seattle as we are pulling out.
peace and luv,
laura

Friday the 13th :)

so i have had a big week in family tree news. i found a lead on the line of ancestors from my son's dad's mom. while this might not seem big to most, we have not seen or heard from his dad in like 7 years. his family does not really recognize my son as part of their family, so i have nothing to go on except for his parents names (and didnt have the maiden name of his mom) and the fact that he is adopted. so, finding her info with her maiden name as well as her parents names was huge for me. jesse now knows that his ancestry on that part of his family is italian and german. so i have been focusing on that area of the family tree. i have also been busy documenting all that i have already done so that i will stop duplicating work. should have been doing this all along, but as always, life is a learning experience. so story for today - the year that i was pregnant with jesse (1989) we didnt really do anything big for thanksgiving. but we did cook a turkey. my mom had to work wednesday and being pregnant and high risk to deliver early i was not to touch the 20 pound turkey. so she got home wednesday night and put the turkey in the oven intending to cook it slowly. she put the oven at like 275 or 250. put the turkey in upside down so she wouldnt have to baste it. all i know is while it was not a pretty turkey, it was the moistest, juiciest, best turkey we ever had.
anyway off to more research,
peace and luv,
laura

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

dr's visit and pretty sunset

so my dr's visit went well yesterday. well being that she feels that DSHS will approve my going on a GAU and starting the disability stuff. Not so great because it means that my MRI's were not good. I have advanced severe arthritis - bone on bone - in my right knee and mild to moderate arthritis in my back with a herniated disk. so yeah no wonder i have been in pain. but on the plus side, i should now get medical to at least help with dr appts and medicine to help control the pain. and i do have a beautiful new niece to spend time with too :) my photo today is the sunset from the ferry back to seattle last sunday when my niece was born. and people think it only rains in seattle!! we actually have a lot of very beautiful days every year and i try to photograph them all :)
anyway, have a busy day today,
peace and luv
laura

Monday, November 2, 2009

our newest family member

Kailiana Victoria Gomez was born 11/1/09 at 1:39pm 7 lbs 10 oz 20.4 inches long and absolutely perfect.

peace and luv
laura

November

November came in with a beautiful little girl. this is my great-niece Kailiana Victoria Gomez. she was born yesterday 11/1/09 and i was privileged enough to be in the room during her birth. i am completely in love with her so you will be seeing her a lot in here i am sure.
hope you all had a wonderful halloween
peace and luv
laura