Genealogy high

I decided to do some scanning of old photos out of my grandparents' photo albums today and I found my great-grandmother's obituary in the book. I'm such a dolt - it certainly wasn't hidden and I've probably read it a hundred times in my life but for some reason today I realized that her father's name was listed in it! Well duh... I hadn't known what it was before because that particular switch had never kicked in, but once I realized what it was I checked http://www.familysearch.org/ and hit pay dirt. I found his information and I also found information on his father and his mother's family dating back to 1602 in the Netherlands. Granted, I still have to verify the information, but at long last I found information on Great-grandma Erikson! Not only that, I found out that her father died when she was 6 and her mother remarried a man named Jesse Calame. In my grandfather's books there were several pictures labeled "Great-grandma Calame" and I couldn't ever figure out where the heck this person came from because I had never seen that name before in our family history. Ta da!


Of course when you find one answer when doing genealogy, you find 10 more questions, which was the case here, so now I have some family sleuthing to do, which I love!


Here's a picture of Great grandma and Great grandpa Erikson, probably from around the 1940s.

Happy Birthday Charlie Brown!

Today would have been Charlie's birthday. I still miss that little stinker. He was so funny and I know he would have been loving summertime, lying in the hostas!

Here's his blog in case you didn't get enough of it before!

More bizarre dreams

I had the most bizarre dreams this morning just before I woke up. For starters, I dreamed I was catholic, going to a Catholic school - with my daughter for a classmate. How odd is that? No, it gets odder. I dreamed for some reason she was going to be in a race with a priest and several other girls from the school! Yeah. Odd. AND, we lived in my mom and dad's old house. For awhile anyway. Then I woke up, thought, "What the heck was that about?" and fell back to sleep again. This time I dreamed we were at the race again, but LDS missionaries were there (thank goodness for some sanity in this bizarre dream) and they were telling Meg she would win the race because she had "The wings of angels on her feet". What?!?! (So much for sanity in the dream.) You think by now when I woke up I'd have the good sense to stay awake, but oh no.... I fall back to sleep again and dream Steve has come home and I tell him about my odd dreams, only to find out we're not in this house, the house we live in now, we live in some dinky little house in South Omaha and I have rosaries hung all over the place. I keep telling him I really have to wake up because I don't want to live in this house, we have a nice house when I'm really awake, it has 3 bedrooms and vaulted ceilings (the ceilings in my dream house were really, really low - he could barely stand up). Funny thing, that was the house we used to live in, not the house we live in now... Odd. I finally got up the next time I woke up, but I just have this icky dreamy feeling hanging on. Oh, what I wouldn't do to be rid of Ambien from my life. Maybe it was the combination of Ambien and the painkillers I'm still taking for my foot. Whatever it was, it was icky, icky, icky. My dogs were even in the dreams - all of them, even the ones that have well, passed on. Odd. Funny thing was, I was really glad to see the dogs! They were the best part of the dream!

Life in a bubble

That's what I feel like I've been living lately. It's so stinking hot and humid, I'm wilted. My foot isn't healing as fast as I thought it would and I'm tired of walking around on the side of my right foot. I probably should be wearing the surgical boot more, but I hate those things. I got my fill of those when I broke my leg and had to wear it for almost 4 months straight. Ugh. It's amazing how much you use your feet! For instance, try to get up without from your knees without putting a foot down. I'm "right-footed" so it was always my right foot I put down to push up with to stand. I'm not going to be doing that for awhile! Ouch.

Looks like things are falling into place for dad's birthday party. Mel got the invitations out and I went to Mangelson's (the one of a kind, kind of everything store) today and got some decorations and molds to make the mints. The Miss, Mel, and Amber are coming over on Saturday so we can get those done. I tried to find something that reminded me of dad when I was looking for molds, so I found a police badge, a motorcycle, a football (Go Big Red!) and a plain round mold with a "75" on top. I think that pretty much covers it. I was thinking maybe the badge was really too big for a mint and thought I might try making chocolate badges. then I thought about melting chocolate, pouring it into the mold, letting it set, unmolding and starting all over, and then thought better of it. Maybe if I had bought more than 1 mold of each, but I didn't, so forget the chocolate. I got some cake decorations, napkins, plates, etc. I hope he's surprised. Mel forgot to put on the invitation that it was a surprise, so hopefully in the next 2 weeks none of the hundred people we invited will let him in on it. Yeah, right. Oh well, I'm sure he'll have fun either way.

Tony and Candace got married today. At least I think they did. Last I heard they were getting married at 4 o'clock at the courthouse, but I haven't heard anything either way. They decided to get married by a judge and then have a big wedding next year when he gets home from Cuba. I could think of about a million ways they could use the money, other than on a big wedding, but hey, anything for a party, right? I think Candace got an apartment not to far from her parents, so she and le bebe will be out on their own while Tony is gone. It makes me kind of sad to think of all the things he's going to miss while he's gone.

I guess that's about it. Not much to say when you don't go out of the house for a week!