happy tuesday everyone

sorry that i didnt manage to get back here yesterday and post more. i think my interview went well. anyway, when i got home i decided to start on some brick wall work. and yesterday's choice was my uncle steve's family. he was my mom's sister's husband. he is my standard that i hold all men up to when dating. he was a truly wonderful man. anyway, just as i was starting my cousin came by so he helped me with some information. and he got a little bit more when he got back to his mom's and asked her. so yeah, i filled in what i could yesterday and am going to go back today and really start digging into the records available. so, story of the day is about my uncle steve. when we were little, we got together a lot so all of us kids grew up together. my aunt and uncle had three kids two were 6 and 4 years older than me. then there were the stair steps. me, my cousin john and my brother. i was oldest, my cousin john 1 year younger, then my brother another year younger. we did everything together. and of course i used my oldest position to make the other two do things - just like my older cousins did with me!! so this one day, we were playing in the garage - i dont know why - and i noticed the dog food sitting there. mmm gravy train. so i tell my cousin and brother that they should eat some of it because it smells pretty good. so they are eating the dog food, i am watching the door into the house so i dont get caught by my aunt, and watching the whole thing from the door to the outside is my uncle steve. after we were done, he pulled me aside and let me know that he had seen what i did. i just knew he was gonna tell my aunt and mom. but no, he gave me a choice - either he tells the mom's or he owns me for the day. needless to say - i did everything that man asked for the entire day without saying a word. i helped him work on his truck, helped clean up the yard, and a few other petty things. all in all it taught me several things - one) my uncle was as sneaky as me. two) he managed to have me spend a day learning from him. three) always watch both doors when making the younger kids do something stupid!! my uncle passed away in 2001 and i still miss him and all the things he taught me and all the knowledge in his head. but i have my memories and i pull them out from time to time.

hope you all have a great day,

peace and luv,

laura

happy tuesday everyone

so, yeah didn't really get back to post yesterday. i just seemed to be very busy after my interview. here is a page i made from photos takes from the Jimi Hendrix memorial at Greenwood Cemetery in Renton. It is not where his actual body is. that is an unmarked area now - only his family and the cemetery know where it is exactly. but this new memorial is really stunning. and i love that there are plots around it for his family as they pass away to be buried. anyway i hope you enjoy,

peace and luv,

laura

will try to post later

have a job interview this morning and that takes priority :(

peace and luv

laura

will try to post later

have an interview this morning so that takes priority :(

peace and luv,

laura

fabulous friday to you all

here it is friday, and i have missed a couple days posting this week. oops, sometimes life works that way. i have been doing a lot of graphic work as well as some freelance data entry this week and so family tree research has been put on the back burner. I am hoping to have some time to work on my tree today or at least this weekend. so, on to my story of the day... when i was in like 5th or 6th grade, we had a family living kinda behind us in the apartments. the jaegers. their kids were jeff and julie jaeger. julie was my friend but i totally had a crush on jeff. and he knew it. but we were kids and yeah. so jeff and i kissed a couple of times and we talked and talked. we actually at that point in life had a lot in common. well the time came for them to move away and he gave me this stuffed rabbit that was about 2 1/2 feet long so that i would remember him. the funny thing is - even if they were just crushes - i totally remember all the guys i liked growing up until high school when my mom remarried and dating was out of the question. anyway, i decided to google jeff and julie a few years ago, only to find out that he is/was a pro football player now. i am glad to see that someone that meant something to me at one point really made something of himself. so - now i can say "i knew him when".

hope everyone has a great weekend,

peace and luv,

laura

chimacum - port hadlock cemetery

hi all,

today my page is photos from the chimacum - port hadlock cemetery. it is a small cemetery, but there are some awesome headstones in there - as well as my best friend's dad. these are just a few of the photos i took while i was there. these are mostly babies/children that passed away for whatever reason. who knows i might decide to research a few of the names and see if i can find a death certificate to show why they died.

anyway, i hope you like my cemetery photos as i have more to do up into pages.

have a great weekend,

peace and luv,

laura

our family tree is getting ready to grow. my nephew and his girlfriend are expecting a baby girl the end of october and another cousin had a baby last may. these are the fun ones to add to the tree knowing that someday all the information i have found will be passed on to them and their families. i mean in the end isnt that what it is all about? i am very excited to finally have a baby girl to spoil. all the other babies in the family right now are boys and while they are fun they are not princesses in the making. i only wish my mom could be here to see her when she comes and give her all the love she shared with my son and my nephew. but i know she is watching over all of us and making sure that we are all ok. story for today - when i was little i was a complete tomboy. i climbed trees, i caught critters, i played sports ... but my mom wanted her little girl. so i was made to wear dresses - especially on school picture day! so this one day - it was either a picture day or a church day not sure which since i was only 6 - i am in this white dress, and i ask my pop-pop (my grandpa) what that is growing in the tree. so he told me that they were black walnuts. why do they call them black walnuts? i dont know laura, why dont you climb up and get some and we will find out. now as an adult looking back, i know he knew. but as a child who idolized her pop-pop i was all over that. so up i climbed - still in the white dress - and i sat on a branch and picked probably 6 or 8 walnuts. and to get down i stored them in the skirt of my dress tucked up into the sash. needless to say, as i hit the ground my grandma and mom came around the house. and when they saw my dress it was oh my oh my look at that dress it is ruined and david whitehouse what were you thinking? and all i could focus on was pop-pop can we open the nuts and see if they are black? at six i didnt realize that it was the black tar like substance on the outside that gave them their name and it was now all over my dress and yes it was indeed ruined. one less dress i had to wear!

hope y'all enjoyed the story today,

peace and luv,

laura

baby shower invitation

so my nephew and his girlfriend are having a baby girl in late october. i am doing the invitations and getting them mailed out as well as making them a baby book. i hope they like this one - she said she wanted princess themed. so i channeled my inner girly girl and this is what i came up with.

hope y'all are having a great week,

peace and luv

laura

story only today.....

i put my mom's ashes in their final resting place over the weekend. here is the story of how our last adventure went:

Yeah we made it to the beach yesterday. No one came but me, Jesse and Jamee. Jamee drove over here Friday night and then took us over there Saturday morning. We actually had a really fun day of it – we had mom in a backpack that we were calling Martha. We got to Chetzemoka park and there was a wedding about to begin so I got on one of the bench swings with Martha beside me and we swang and watched the wedding. Then we went and looked at the flowers. Then we went down to the water and first tried to wait for the couple people down there to leave, but they were not leaving. So we wandered a little ways up the beach – found a hobbit hole (actually probably a homeless persons home) and decided that was the place as soon as people left. Then we look over and there are these kids and one is dressed like a garden gnome only in purple with the beard and everything. I got a picture of that kids back. (oh yeah I took photos of all of this) I got a picture of the ferry and a sailboat crossing which totally ties into her journal page. so finally I was just done waiting – no one was paying us any attention so I took mom and – well – dumped her where the waves were hitting. And we cheered her on as each wave took more and more of her out to the water. When it was done and we went back to the ramp/trail to go back up to the park we were resting and I was prepping my body to get back up the hill. Well this fairy wish/angel kiss – depending on what your family called them. They are like dandelion seeds only fully round. Anyway, the fairy wish went by and as it did it touched Jesse, then me, then Jamee, then landed on the ground long enough for me to get a picture. Then when Jamee saw it too – Jesse was still down the beach a little – it floated straight up till we couldn’t see it anymore. I think it was mom saying goodbye. So then we hung out at the park for a while longer – I needed to rest after that hike up. And as we were getting ready to leave, here come 7 kids dressed as garden gnomes – oops – the seven dwarves!! So they were having a play over in a different part of the park, so we went and watched part of it – there was no park seating over there and my back was killing me. Also, before we went to the park we stopped and saw my best friend Vicky and stopped by the Chimacum/Port Hadlock cemetery – her dad is there. And since I love photographing old cemeteries we went to the 4 in Port Townsend after the park, but I was too pooped to get many photos. Then we stopped for a minute at this cemetery by her house near Sequim which was really really little. We then met up with her husband, went to dinner at Arby’s and then he took his time and drove us all the way back home so I didn’t have to face the ferry and three busses to get home. I need to do a totally awesome thank you for them for all the driving. So, all in all it was exactly the way I wanted it to be. Not all sappy and sad – but happy and adventurous. I am making a movie of it that I will make sure everyone gets. Just like the funeral – I didn’t follow anything but my gut so as far as I am concerned, it was a perfect day!!

peace and luv.

laura

thoughts

so my mom wanted to move to where she could hear the ferries and boats in the water. she never got that chance, so that is where i decided she would want to spend eternity. here is a photo of the ferry and a sailboat getting ready to pass each other. i am very happy, relieved that she is now in her final resting place. it took too long, trying to get everyone's schedules to sync. wise words were said to me "those who truly wanted to be there were there." yes, i know that there were some who wanted to be there but for reasons beyone their control they couldnt. but you know what? they made sure that they were there in some way - a letter, an email saying that you guys were in my thoughts all day, little things like that. the others, didnt want to be there. this was not something that i just sprung on people, i sent out invitations 2 months in advance. i sent out reminders at one month, one week, and the day before. so - i feel it went perfectly, since i also didnt have to cater to the normal belief that this should be a sad thing. it was a time to spend one last adventure with my mom, and that is what i did.

hope y'all have a great week,

peace and luv,

laura

putting my moms ashes into the water today

well this has been a very long time coming - over 2 1/2 years now. my moms ashes are being spread into the water. most everyone is not coming but i dont care anymore. i need to get this done for me. this is a little picture i did up with her journal page from when she moved to her apartment in kent. it talks about how she has lived where there were planes, trains and automobiles that she could hear and how if she moves again she wants to be able to hear ferries and boats. so we are setting her free where she will hear ferries and boats. i also feel that she will catch a ride with the whales and head up to alaska in the summer and baja in the winter. but that is just my fantasy theory. :) anyway i hope everyone has a great day,

peace and luv

laura

putting my moms ashes into the water today

well this has been a very long time coming - over 2 1/2 years now. my moms ashes are being spread into the water. most everyone is not coming but i dont care anymore. i need to get this done for me. this is a little picture i did up with her journal page from when she moved to her apartment in kent. it talks about how she has lived where there were planes, trains and automobiles that she could hear and how if she moves again she wants to be able to hear ferries and boats. so we are setting her free where she will hear ferries and boats. i also feel that she will catch a ride with the whales and head up to alaska in the summer and baja in the winter. but that is just my fantasy theory. :) anyway i hope everyone has a great day,

peace and luv

laura

genealogy and genes

today i thought i would share with you some of the fun i have had with my genealogy research. as i find more info on various aspects of the family - especially photos - i can see how our genes come through. i always knew for example that i looked just like my mom. i only have the one example of me and my mom here but plan on doing more pages to compare us through the years.

me and my mom

Jamee and her great grandmother - mother's father's mother

Jamee and her great grandmother a few years younger

Four generations of Johnson men - my grandfather, my father, my brother, my nephew and my son

Gary friend and his maternal grandfather - this was my step-father -he is my sister Jamee's natural father

I hope you all enjoyed my little discoveries ---

peace and luv

laura

happy friday everyone

today i have a picture i created out of two pictures. the background is the entrance to an area of highgate cemetery in england. the mourning woman is a photo of a statue from a grave. neither was colored this way in reality. this is how i see it in my mind. all mossy and green and peaceful and the mourning woman just almost colorless. i know when i was deep in mourning for my mother i felt really colorless.

hope y'all have a great friday

peace and luv

laura

still hitting brick walls

i cannot wait for new information to be made available to ancestry.com because these brick walls suck. but i know eventually i will be able to break them. and that hope and faith keeps me going. the excitement i feel when i log on and find that a person who previously had no clues now has clues is amazing. it is a total rush - and then i am off researching like mad again. just to get to a new brick wall. but at least i am entertained, right??

so on to the story of the day - when i was young, we always spent at least a long weekend up at my aunt and uncle's cabin on mt rainier. and i always looked forward to it because it meant that we got that total family life thing which we didnt have as a usual thing. my mom was a single mom so me and my brother spent a lot of time with babysitters and my grandma and as we got older just being by ourselves. but at the cabin, my aunt and uncle and their three kids were there, plus my mom, me and my brother. and even though i hated camping - the cabin i loved. it was still roughing it - outhouse, no plumbing, no electricity. but it was also family, and friends, and laughter, and love, and adventures. and when we went up early enough in the summer as we went over the summit there was snow - the seattle area doesnt get a lot of snow - rain yes but not snow. so as a kid mom would stop so we could get out and play in the snow - feet and feet of snow!! i have so many memories of the cabin, the boys getting up in the morning and honestly peeing off the front porch onto areas where we didnt walk, adventures looking in the woods for elk and bears - i personally never saw a bear. learning to sit and be still so the wildlife would come out and we could see it. going to bumping lake and catching tadpoles to put in the little pond my uncle made in the creek that runs through the property. then hoping against hope that there would be frogs the next time we came. rainy days when we could all play board games or sit and read a book or even just dream about the future. i still love the cabin, just now it is far less often and usually after about 2 days i am begging to get back to civilization.

anyway i hope everyone has a great day,

peace and luv,

laura

happy birthday david

so it is my sister's husband's birthday today. i am gonna post this and tag her where i know she will see it, but i am not sure he will get to see it since he is in the doghouse over forgetting her birthday in june. the craziness that we all call life and all!! but here is what i made him, i will admit i dont know him very well, but i do know he is into world of warcraft so i used icons from that game.

hope y'all have a great day,

peace and luv.

laura

new information

here's the deal, somewhere out there i have another brother. he is my half brother. my mom had him when i was three and my brother was one. we went and lived with my aunts while she was pregnant and having the baby. she gave him up for adoption. i didnt really have much more information than that since my mother has passed away and i had lost the original info that she had given me. so i asked my aunt, and she was not much help. she didnt know much more than i did. then i had an epiphany - ask my auntie! she is not really related, but she was my mom's best friend - and partner in crime in those days. so she had more info for me. so now i have more to go on. it is awesome. i would like to find him if only to know what he looks like. but if more happens it would be greatly embraced. i also found out that my auntie was adopted. i am sure that at some point it had been said around me but it just didnt sink in. so i am also helping to research her stuff. so - here is my story for the day. for my 5th birthday i wanted a panda party. i was really into pandas. so my mom threw me a real birthday party - friends came over, we had party games - pin the nose on the panda is the one i remember - we had party hats, those blowy things. and here comes my auntie with one of her famous cakes - a 3D bear decorated to look like a panda with blue and white instead of black and white. well it comes time to sing happy birthday, cut the cake and have cake and ice cream and what happens? princess laura makes an appearance and throws a complete tantrum because "you are NOT cutting my panda cake!!" even at 5 i knew the appropriate thing to end a fit like that was to run into the bathroom and slam the door. so my mom and auntie got me calmed down and we ended up eating the cake - they just couldnt cut it where i could see it. gotta love drama queens in training!!

anyway i hope y'all are having a great week,

peace and luv

laura

pondering the past

so i think everyone has those days where just out of nowhere you think of someone and wonder what might have been. you know the one, you were in love but it just didnt work out for whatever reason. well i suppose i was having one of those days because this is what i ended up designing yesterday. i cant sell it becaust the words in the heart are the lyrics to the song "what might have been" by little texas. and yeah they are country and they dont even exist anymore. i think they were from the early 90's. anyway i woke up yesterday morning with this song playing through my head and this is the end result. hope y'all like it,

peace and luv,

laura

my computer is much better today

i dont know for sure why my computer was acting up yesterday, but i updated my java plug in and now it is fine. so i talked to my dad over the weekend and asked if he and his brother were his parents only children - there are a lot of child deaths on his side of the family, there were 5 years between his brother and him, and we have a family name tradition that you would think would have been carried out on the first born son not the second one five years down the road. anyway he let me know that his mom had also had a stilborn child before him as well as 2 miscarriages. so i am now looking to see if i can find a record of the stilborn child. kentucky is really good about having their records available to ancestry.com. not like washington where i live. i understand giving a certain number of years before posting the public records to the internet due to privacy rights, but being the impatient person that i am i want everything posted - after all it is public record. but since i wont be getting that i will be thankful for what i do have access to. story of the day... my father is legally blind. he was born that way. he can still see just not well enough to do things like drive. from what i understand he has periferal vision in one eye and tunnel vision in the other. supposedly this is not a medical issue that will be passed on to other generations, it is due to medication his mother had to take while she was pregnant with him due to a serious kidney infection. anyway, that being said, several years ago my father decided that he would get a bike to ride around town and get to and from work. fine. seemed weird to me that if he cannot drive he would be riding a bike. so this one day it is raining and he is on his way to wherever it is he is going. he gets to the railroad tracks that he goes over all the time, and boom! down he goes. wet rubber meeting wet rubber not the best for traction. needless to say he actually broke his hip and had to have it replaced. so yeah, my father does not ride a bike anymore - now he is plotting to get a scooter and blindly terrorize the innocent citizens of kentucky!! :) luv you dad :)

anyway i will post more tomorrow,

peace and luv,

laura

much better today

so, after being sick, taking my usual sunday off, and computer issues on monday i am finally back. here is a birthday picture i made for my son's friend cinnamon - she is the daughter i didnt get to raise. she is a little weird - as are all of his friends - but i love her just the same. anyway the purple wolf is her dressed up in a costume she made and sending her the kiss through the rip is david tennant her dream man (he is from dr. who).

hope you all are having a great week,

peace and luv,

laura

no post today

having computer issues :(

no post today

having computer issues :(

brick walls hurt!!!

so, i was trying to find anything more on a couple of my brick walls yesterday and all i kept thinking is "brick walls hurt!" this leads me into my story for the day. when i was a preteen and early teen (probably 11 - 14) i spent time in the ER almost every weekend. i have sprained and strained almost every area of my body as well as broken a couple. most of this came from the fact that i loved riding my bike, my skates, my skateboard - and anything else i could come up with that had wheels and might go fast. and i was awesome at it. i had no fear. anything the guys could think up i would try at least once. we lived in apartments at the bottom of a long steep hill - that was the only street into and out of our apartment complex. also there was a utility road (unpaved) behind our apartments that had an even steeper hill going down to the river. and we had a lot of woods around too. while i have some very unpleasant memories from living here, i can now look back and see the good ones too. so, back to me having no fear. i was great at going, and i felt that the faster the better! unfortunately, i was not so great at stopping. shoot, half the time the bikes i was on were homemade from parts of other bikes and didnt have brakes yet. so, stopping usually meant that i aimed whatever i was riding on at something not moving and just hit it. i used parked cars to stop. i used buildings to stop. i used gaurd rails to stop. and yes, i occasionally actually crashed for no apparent reason. so i know that "brick walls hurt!"

anyway, i am off on my adventure of a day today,

peace and luv,

laura

finished picture for melanie

hi all,

i tweaked the picture for melanie some more yesterday and here is the finished product. i am liking playing with the colored pencil look right now. i also worked on a picture for my mom that i will hand out when we put her ashes into the water next week. i will post that one tomorrow. anyway what all i have on the picture for melanie is all stuff that to me represents her. there are several gardenias, a couple roses, a cross, the blues and purples, and a fantasy bird that reminds me of a humming bird. anyway, off for another adventure of a day for myself.

peace and luv

laura

almost together

i almost have my friends tree information all together. it is a mixture of the book printout that i can do from my program and documentation from ancestry.com. i hope she will love it! so i will be busy getting that all together this next week so i can give it to her when i am up there on the 19th. on a personal note i have been revisiting the brick walls in my family tree. i so hope that the 1940 us census is made available soon. i think it should be next year, but am not completely sure on that. the one that i would like to really find is my maternal grandmother's brother. family story is that his father was so abusive that he left at 17 never to be heard from again. but family stories are just that - stories. so he is a brick wall. i believe i found him on the 1930 census as a boarder. but have not been able to find a death certificate or record. i also need to make a date with my aunts and dig out some more family info from them. i would love to scan all their photos so that i would have access to them for my family tree. anyway, i am totally rambling now. i am off to get some research done. i dont really have a story right off the top of my head for today, if i think of one i will post it later. hope everyone has a great weekend,

peace and luv,

laura

preview....

so sept 8th was my other mom's birthday. she passed away last december so it was a rough day for my little sister. so i was working on something for her to commemorate her birthday - i am not done yet, but here is a preview. and yes i know it is cluttered - that is kinda on purpose - family thing - those who need to get it will :) anyway, i am headed to work on this some more. i will post the finished product later today or tomorrow.

happy friday y'all

peace and luv

laura

catching up from being sick

so, i didnt really get anything done family tree wise since i was sick and in bed sleeping. so today, my projects are to get a detailed birthday list for myself from various sources since it will include most of my friends too. but i want to gift everyone i know with an original happy birthday art and it gets difficult if i dont know that the birthday is coming until the day before. so today i get that organized!! Then i have more to do on my friend's family tree so that i can deliver it to her when i am up that way. it was supposed to be this weekend, but will have to wait until next weekend. anyway, story for today. when i was a teenager, while my step-dad and i did not get along (to say the least), there were aspects of what we did as a family that i really liked and actually miss. one was going to a lot of sporting events, the other was sunday drives. on sunday drives - which could actually happen on saturdays - we got in the car and wandered. in the summer it was always an adventure finding garage sales, in the spring and fall looking for places with awesome colors and in the winter just driving. now a lot of our drives were to go visit with my little sister, then we would detour on the way home. one of our drives we were coming back from visiting my little sister and decided that we would stop and have a picnic dinner of albertson's fried chicken and potato salad. so we stopped, and being the oblivious one in the family, i had no clue where we were, just that we were not home in renton. so we are eating on this beautiful lawn with trees around, and i notice this beautiful old building across the lawn with large fences around it. i assume that it is some historical building and start talking about how beautiful it is and how i would love to live there. my mother then explained that it could be arranged since it was western state mental hospital and since my mental state was always in question she was sure they could get me in there. yeah, my mom was very warped as am i. needless to say, i decided i didnt really want to live there. but it is still a beautiful place for a picnic :)

**Photo of Western State Hospital**

hope everyone is having a great week,

peace and luv

laura

Happy Birthday Julie - a day late :)

this is my happy birthday picture for Julie, my little sister (kinda in a weird my family sort of way) her birthday was yesterday but i was so sick i didnt really spend much time on the computer.

hope everyone is having a great week,

peace and luv,

laura

no post today

sorry not posting today...... head cold......misery!

peace and luv

laura

sick today

sorry not posting today...... head cold......misery!

peace and luv

laura

family tree photo collages

good morning everyone,

today i am sharing with you my family tree photo collages. this one is my maternal line, my mom, my aunts and my grandma.

this one is my paternal line, my father, uncle, grandfather and great grandfather.

i find it really interesting that my fathers family is all male and my mothers family is all female. these are photos for my personal family tree book, which is why i didnt include photos of my brother. he will get the same type of collages for his book with photos of him. and instead of a story today, i will give an interesting family fact. traditionally, it is the male line that carries on the family name through their lineage. however, my dad's name is being carried on through my son. my brother has a son as well, but his last name is his mother's maiden name. so, that is my family fact for the day :) hope you all had a wonderful holiday weekend,

peace and luv,

laura

abstract life

ok, so yesterday was labor day (here in the US) and there was a criminal minds marathon on so that is what we had on the tv all day. we dont necessarily watch it constantly, but we listen to it. anyway one of the episodes had this abstracct art on the victim's wall which turned out to be sliced up photos of her put together randomly. so i decided i wanted to try that with my photography. i am not sure i like this particular one. still deciding. but am willing to try a couple more even though they are very time consuming. anyway, if you feel like leaving thoughts on this, feel free. i would love to know what others think about this one.

peace and luv,

laura

hard time concentrating

this weekend i have had a really hard time concentrating not only on family trees but on anything. my back has been hurting really bad and i am wondering if there is a connection between the change in the weather and the added pain in my back. i dont really have a story right off the top of my head..... but if i think of a good one i will come back and post it.

peace and luv,

laura

rainy days and mondays.....

so yesterday it was raining - and i dont mean the usual seattle area mist -- i mean rain! so i went out and took photos of the puddles :) i happen to like the rain, just wish it didnt mean months and months of dark dreary days. anyway, still a holiday for most today,

hope y'all have a great day,

peace and luv,

laura

lazy saturdays are the best

today in the greater seattle area it is very gray and rainy. perfect kind of day to make something decadent and loose oneself in research. yesterday was spent with thoughts to those i have loved and lost. today, i will be fine tuning the book for my best friend and her family. not a whole lot to write about ...... since i didnt really do anything on the family trees yesterday. but i am sure i can squeeze out a story about my life. one year for mother's day, i think it was 1979 or so, my best friend and i decided we wanted to make homemade perfume for our mothers. her mom had told us how they used to make rosewater when she was growing up. so off we went in search of roses in our apartment complex. well there were no roses so we decided that cherry blossoms would workk just as well and we liked the smell of them. so with no adult help, we got a gallon jar with a lid from my house (i loved pickles when i was little so my mom bought them in bulk) filled it about 3/4 of the way with cherry blossoms and then filled the jar with water and put it in her closet. that was about two weeks before mothers day. the day before mothers day we strained out the flowers, put the "cherry blossom water" into pretty jars - we had decorated them ourselves with stickers - and put pretty ribbons on them. we were so proud of our unique gift. and our mother's were nice enough not to tell us that the water really smelled kinda bad, and that within a day there was mold growing in our perfume gift. :) at least we tried and it was not your normal card and candy thing. my life has been just one adventure after another. i hope y'all are not bored by my little stories.

have a great weekend,

peace and luv,

laura

abandonment

these were photos of an abandoned estate in russia from my abandoned places group. they have absolutely beautiful abandoned estates in russia since the fall of communism there. and while most need hard core repair i would so love to own one!! i just loved these photos in the almost dark and snow....... it looks so peaceful.

well i hope everyone is enjoying their weekend,

peace and luv,

laura

totally forgot to talk about the show i watched.....

on national geographic channel they had this show called the human family tree. it was about our dna and how we all go back genetically to "genetic adam" and "genetic eve" (hmm sound familiar?) and how our dna can show the path our ancestors took out of africa to get to where we now are today. now i do not think of myself as uber religious, but i do know my bible as well as puite a bit about history. you cannot really be that big into genealogy without having the interest in history as well i dont think. anyway i personally find it very interesting how through science we can genetically prove adam and eve as well as the seven tribes of abraham. do i know for sure that the bible is fact? no, that is why it is called faith. but i think it has a lot of very good rules and life lessons in it even if you dont want to believe in god. ok - enough sermon time :) now for story time :) todays story is about my 18th birthday. this should have been a huge day for me, but instead i totally felt like the girl on 16 candles. no one remembered my birthday. i got up, nothing. went to school, nothing - well my friends remembered but still. headed home after school - still nothing. not even a phone call from my mom. well i guess my step-brother heard me bitching at school and called his dad or sister and at some point my mom remembered too. so because these were the days before cell phones, and my family was so great at communication anyway, my step-dad and step-sister went to the grocery store bakery to get me a cake, my mom stopped on the way home to pick me up an ice cream cake from baskins and robbins, and my step-brother -- he out shined them all :) he took a bakery class for three hours in the afternoons instead of high school classes and his bakery class was practicing roses......... so he had them do a 1/4 sheet cake for me with roses everywhere!! everything from rose buds to full open roses, in every color you can imagine. so, the girl who was really pouting by now ended up with three cakes and a ton of apologies. i honestly do not remember the gifts i ended up with, but the cakes -- that i remember.

i hope these stories give you a smile as well as help you remember fun times with your family and friends.

peace and luv,

laura

i guess my head was in the clouds

yesterday i was trying to organize a bunch of my files on my computer, and found myself just like a kid in school on a sunny day. looking out the window watching the big poofy clouds go by. so i took a break and took some photos of the clouds. yes, i was that kid in school. and yes, i am still like that. i have learned through the years to stay focused when i need to, but still - if there is a window i will occasionally look out and daydream.

hope everyone has a great friday,

peace and luv

laura

adventures in life and death......

that is what i named my blog because i am finding out stories of people who are dead to give to people who are living. but if you really think about it everyday is an adventure in life and death. people are born every day and people die every day. my friends and i had a birthday memorial for a good friend who committed suicide last december. none of us know for sure what caused him to do this, we know the events leading up to it played into it, but no one was there when he made that final decision. i feel for everyone who loved him including myself because we now have to go through our lives with a piece of our heart missing. we never get to see this wonderful person again. but he would not want us to mourn his decision. so we celebrated his birthday. i made a memorial dvd for those who wanted it and a photo of him with a poem my friend wrote for his friend who committed suicide. he gave me permission to use it as it said what i think we all feel. honestly i was dreading going because i really didnt want the mood to be sad and down, but i went and we all had a fun time remembering kyle and laughing at stories about him. so -- i guess that is my story for the day :) and i spent my day yesterday working on the memorial dvd so that was my family tree stuff for the day too. because in the end aren't our friends also our family -- the family we can pick and choose :) not that i dont love all my family but we all know there are times.............. and on that note, i am off to get some work done for the day.

peace and luv,

laura

Miracle

this is my friend maggie's daughter miracle when she was 5. i loved that she was dancing around for me to take pictures and have turned her into a fairy. there is nothing better in life the the simply joy of a child.

peace and luv

laura

merging and other adventures

ok, so anyone who has ridden with me in a vehicle knows i hate merging. i do not drive, never have, but as a passenger i hate merging traffic. i am always convinced someone is going to take out my side of the vehicle i am in. well, i am not much fonder of merging trees together!! it is time consuming and if it werent for the fact that all three trees have slightly different information, i would not do it. so needless to say - i am merging my friends three trees in order to start putting her book together in order. and while it is very time consuming, i know in the end it will be worth it. now, if only the new printhead for my printer would get here, i could also start printing it :) and now, on to my story of the day. this is a somewhat short story today, about my son. and i suppose me terrorizing him in a mom kinda way. when he was little, we used to go on a lot of walks. and i also used to tell him he must be an alien a lot as well - it just fit into the life we had!! i am a big sci-fi geek and he loves it too so any time he did something that just wasn't me, i would tell him that he was an alien. anyway, one summer evening we were walking and he looked up and saw the searchlights that they put by stores that are having big sales -- that look like circular lights scanning the sky :) and he asked what they were - so me being me, i told him that it was the mothership scanning for aliens and we better get him home quickly!! this was funny for a while, but after about a year and a half, we were out walking one evening and there were searchlights in the sky so i said "the mothership is scanning for aliens, you better get home quick" and he just stopped and turned around and said "i am not an alien and you are not funny". well yeah, that was the end of that. almost 10 years later i still tell him he is an alien, but i dont tell him that the mothership is searching for him. i was not trying to be mean, just playing with him. but i guess like any other game (except for monopoly of course) it got old.

anyway, i am off to merge some more,

hope y'all have a great day,

peace and luv,

laura

september birthdays

so, we have several september birthdays and i have decided that everyone in my family now gets personalized happy birthday pictures from me. yesterday i did the ones for KC who is my little sister kinda and mitchell who is my nephew kinda -- i have a very interesting family/extended family. makes it interesting to explain it all to people. anyway the top one is KC's and the bottom one is Mitchell's. hope you enjoy,

peace and luv,

laura

so, did you ever have a day where everything seemed to snowball? all i am trying to do is make sure that i have all of the four most recent generations in my friends family tree, as well as addresses and military info for all that i can, and i am just adding and adding and not getting the in depth research done. i really want to be able to give her a copy of a family tree book when i am up visiting and releasing my moms ashes on the 12th, but i also want it to be perfect. so i guess i just make sure it gets done the way i want it :) in the meantime, i have over 500 hints on my sister's tree and over 500 on my tree that need looking into as well. so, at least i am busy with something right? so, story for today..... when my little sister turned 19, i wanted to take her to canada - at that point in time the legal drinking age was 19 - for a fun sisters weekend. so my mom footed 1/2 the bill and off we went. we took the train up to vancouver, caught the transit to our hotel room in chinatown (i didnt know at the time that the weekend of july 1st was their independence day celebration), got settled and went out exploring. the plan was have some dinner and hit the night clubs till closing time and crash till check out time and then go wait for the train back. but my sister was intimidated by the crowds in the clubs. they were mostly standing room only. so we ended up going to the movies and watching twister, then heading back to the hotel and watching bad karaoke in the hotel lounge. on the plus side the drinks we had were really good - total girly drinks!! i dont remember what he called them anymore but they tasted like chocolate covered bananas. so we drank, and laughed (a lot) at the karaoke people and actually had a really great sister weekend - even if we didnt really do what we had planned. some of our greatest adventures start out as one plan and get all twisted up and end up something totally different in the end.

anyway, i am off to get more research done for today,

peace and luv,

laura

for lydia

since my friend robbert scott let me use his poem for my friend kyle's birthday celebration, and it was originally written for his friend lydia, i made a couple more pages using the poem. the first is full of flowers with a heart and the other is an eye crying onto a single red rose. working on these seems to have jump started my creativity again. so, y'all can look forward to more projects that just dont seem right to be sold on my sites.

peace and luv,

laura