#Saturday Night Genealogy fun

[fhtess]

Mid-week Genealogy Fun...and a discovery...

This past weekend, Randy Seaver issued the following Genealogy Fun challenge: Where did your 16 2nd great-grandparents live and die?  What are their birth, marriage and death dates and locations? Using Family Historian, I was able to generate reports that gave me all this information. As you’ll see below, I know a great deal more about my English maternal line than my Polish paternal line – just…

[geneajournals]

Edmund Salter - My Earliest Paternal Ancestor

What does an amateur genealogist / family historian do on a Saturday night?  I have put aside “hunting and gathering” to complete the latest Saturday Night Genealogy Fun mission. Tonight’s challenge from Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings (courtesy of Linda Stufflebean) is as follows:

“Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision. 

1)   Today's challenge is to answer the question "Who Is the Earliest Ancestor In Your Paternal Tree?

2)  Tell us about your earliest paternal ancestor in your family tree…”

Edmund Salter (1816-?) is my 3rd great-grandfather.  He is the earliest ancestor in my paternal family tree. I wrote about Edmond in my 19 December 2021 blog post “Edmund Salter - Paternal Line”.

My Paternal Line

[mcphilbrick]

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun

Calling All Genea-Musings Fans: It’s Saturday Night Again –  Time For Some More Genealogy Fun!! Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.  1)   Today’s challenge is to answer the question “Who Is the Earliest Ancestor In Your Paternal Tree? 2)  Tell us about your earliest paternal ancestor in your family tree on your own blog post, in a comment here,…

[babybluebanshee]

Stuff I’ve had to deal with as a city librarian, mega edition

4/? 

My boss is on vacation, and whenever he does that, a whole bunch of chaotic shit just descends on our heads at once. We don’t know if it’s because he’s not there to nip stuff in the bud or if he just has some kind of calming aura about him that keeps this stuff in check, but we dread whenever he leaves for any extended period of time. 

Since I had a few of these backlogged already, I figured I’d give you guys another glance into the weird-ass world of librarians. 

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- A woman couldn’t access her email, and flew into a rage because she thought were intentionally blocking her from getting in so we could “hack” her. Turns out she was putting a comma between gmail and com instead of a period. She did not apologize for yelling at us.

- A man called the library and I answered. I tried to do my little “thank you for calling the public library” bit, and he cuts me off to ask for “extension 2606″. I told him we didn’t have any extensions and I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. He sighed dramatically, then handed the phone off to someone else, saying, “Can you talk to this dummy?” A woman comes on and gruffly asks if this is Charlotte. I said no, this was the public library. She just said okay and hung up. No apology there either.

- The DAR were scheduled to come in one Saturday, but never showed up. Come the next Saturday, I was walking by one of our meeting rooms, and there’s the DAR inside. Turns out they’d changed the date of their meeting without letting us know, even hanging on to the keyfab that gets you into the building before it opens. When I poked my head into the room to figure out what the heck happened, they gave me a look like I’d personally stepped on all their toes.

- A guy with a huge cowboy aesthetic came in to do a college essay for a comparative religions class, asking for my help in finding some books. I asked him what kind, and he looked around, over his shoulder like he was afraid someone would be listening, then leaned very close to me and whispered, “I don’t wanna offend you, ma’am, but I’m looking for books on paganism.” I thought at first he was joking, but his face was dead serious. 

- A woman brought back ten audio books that were soaked in Dr. Pepper. When I told her that they were wet, she looked me square in the eye, said “yeah”, then walked out. 

- A ten year old boy threatened two girls in my book club because he thought they were making fun of him, saying he “should stab [them] with a knife”. I told my supervisor, who went and talked to the boy’s mom, and apparently all she did was say, “Oh, he’d never do that.”, and went back to whatever she was doing on the computer. I talked to her later and she tried to pin it on violent video games. Needless to say, he has no been back. 

- I was helping a woman in the genealogy room, looked up, and saw a massive bug crawl through her hair. She didn’t seem to notice at all, and it was all I could do not to keep staring. 

- The poor assistant director found three used tampons out in our parking lot. 

- There was some legal kerfuffle a few months back regarding the demolition of a building that wasn’t handled properly. This dude on YouTube (his channel basically consists of him “investigating” things like this, meaning he goes into municipal buildings and harasses the staff, using their irritated reactions as “proof” they’re crooked) made a scene at city hall with the city coordinator. We were terrified all the next day that he was going to show up at the library, especially because it was story time day. He never did, but we still had the fear.

- A woman brought her own DVD (I’m still not sure why), and left it on the copier. I thought it was one of ours and someone had just left it there, and when I picked it up to put it back, she said, “Oh no, that’s mine.” I thought she meant she was going to check it out, so when she came up to pay for some copies she made, I picked it up again and went to scan it. She said, “no, that’s mine!” and it finally clicked that it was her personal DVD. I apologized and explained why I did that, and she said “I can bring in the receipt if you want.” I thought she was joking and said no, I believed her. She left, then came back an hour later, pulled me away from my shelving, just to push the receipt for the DVD in my face and say “I’m not a thief! See, I told you I’m not a thief!” 

- The amount of people who just...don’t seem to understand why we ask for their library cards is staggering. Like, people will come in without their wallets or IDs for whatever reason, and get pissy with us when we tell them we aren’t allowed to check anything out to anyone without their card or driver’s license. Like, we don’t care if you’ve memorized your number or come in all the time. We wouldn’t waste the plastic if we didn’t actually need you to use the damn things. 

- I don’t know what attracts druggies to libraries, but it’s a huge problem. The amount of unidentified pills I’ve found (including in the children’s area) is jarring. One time, the children’s librarian found the finger of a rubbed glove, tied off with something brown inside. We called the police, and it turns out that’s a popular method for transporting heroin. 

- My coworker Allie discovered a child playing out in our parking lot, occasionally jumping out into the road. She asked if his family was around, and he said yes, they were inside at one of the programs. This kid’s family had just let him wander away and into the street. 

- I came in early one morning only to discover a portion of the ceiling in the computer lab had caved in.

- There’s this very sweet Asian lady who doesn’t speak great English who comes in all the time to print off things for her Sunday school class. She asked for help one night, and after the librarian had gotten her situated, the man sitting a few computers away started making hateful, racist comments to her. She even moved to a different bank of computers, and he got up and followed her so he could keep being a dick. The lady only told us after he’d left because she felt that unsafe.

- We had another bed bug problem crop up, involving a completely different person. Guess who had to go pull all the books that we suspected to be infested. I was itchy all night.

- In honor of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, I expanded my LGBT history display from a small display case to two large tables. Naturally, bigots have been complaining about it. The worst one has been the couple who thought it was “insulting”, stormed out of the library, and complained to the city coordinator. 

- I had to make a membership for a man with a huge swastika tattoo on his arm. It was all I could do not to jump the desk and claw out his eyes.

[dontaylor50-blog]

My Paternal Grandfather’s Matrilineal Line

For Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, I review my paternal prandfather’s matrilineal line.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun By Don Taylor Recently, Randy Seaver, in his “Saturday Night Genealogy Fun” post, suggested folks document “Their paternal grandfather’s matrilineal line (i.e., the mother of your paternal grandfather, and her mother, etc.).” Here’s mine. My paternal grandfather is Bert Allen Roberts (1903-1949) His mother was  Clora Dell Scott (1883-1945), who married Hugh Ellis…

[fortheking16]

Sunday Afternoon Genealogy Fun – What Was Your Childhood Home Like? — Lois Willis - Genealogy and Family History

Sunday Afternoon Genealogy Fun – What Was Your Childhood Home Like? — Lois Willis – Genealogy and Family History

Each week on Randy Seaver’s Genea-musings blog he has a post for Saturday night Genealogy fun. Because of the time difference, I have called my series Sunday Afternoon Genealogy Fun. This week’s mission was: 1) What was your childhood home like?  How big was it?  How many rooms did it have?  What facilities did you have? What furniture […]

Sunday Afternoon Genealogy Fun – What Was Your Childhood…

[you4got2readmyblog]

A Week Deep

Me: 26 year old single, white male. Right off the bat, I have an advantage so things come easy, right? Sure. I still want to get a genealogy test because white privilege is an excuse for white people in a dying system where white people don’t know where they came from. No more politics, I promise. they’re not worth talking about. 

Flashback to March 2017, and i’m leading a miserable life by my own definition. I hated the job that i was at, mon-fri, 9-5, staring at a computer, testing “concrete batch and control software.”and I hated my boss. It was even less fun than it sounds. I was at that job for 8 of the lovely 24 hours of my days. Hours i keep unusual perhaps unhealthy track of. We’re on a timer, ya know? So I was in a relationship that started strong and was slowly tearing apart at the seams due to stress caused by 2 people not knowing what they want for themselves but trying to make something work together. Thinking it will inevitably answer one of the many dubious questions you have managed to conjure up about the great worth of your life thus far and where you are taking it.

So I; one miserable person, found myself constantly indulging on acts of selfishness and in turn, making the person who i should have been being selfless towards, miserable as well. We all pledge ourselves to our relationships in life to some extent. Be it work or school or business, platonic or romantic. What we often don’t pay as much attention to in pursuit of that, is the relationships we leave behind. Rest assured there will be stragglers left behind...and you can’t seem to do anything but let them unravel, for they’ll never be as they were. And that’s ok. They were strong while they were lasting but nothing lasts forever and everything here dies alone. Sad but true fact.

All tears aside I could be a hermit... Really though. I’m nocturnal by nature, something about the dark of the night calls out to me to stay awake and cease the time then, while everyone else is sleeping. You can figure something out now! At 3 AM through the week, no one really wants anything from you unless you’re in the company of someone else who’s awake. With this philosophy I have come to find sleep deprivation and appreciate the fact that I have to have solitude in my life. It is my safe quiet place away from everything except the thoughts in my mind, which I desperately need to sift through and inventory on a pretty regular basis.

So to bring a crooked circle back around. After I left the miserable job I was at and destroyed a relationship with a woman I loved and whom i saw as my wife one day... I press reset. I looked for a new job and found one related to something I was passionate about. That job was working on cell phones, tablets and small electronics.Turns out I’m pretty good at it too. My dad was a mechanic and handy-man by nature so i think its in my blood. I got a job at a place called CPR: Cell Phone Repair and it’s a franchise opportunity. I went to corporate training in Cleveland in June and met a guy named Rey and a guy named Ravi. Ravi was planning to open a CPR near San Diego in the coming months and Rey was his only hired technician. I joked with Rey the Saturday before training was over that I could come work with Rey in the shop out there if i couldn’t find new roommates. To my surprise, Rey went and asked Ravi right then and there if he’d be interested in hiring me. Literally, as simple as that. The idea was born.

Fast forward to 8:40 AM PST, October 15th 2017 and I’ve been living in San Diego for a week now. Its still surreal but i already know I did the right thing. Deep down it feels good to write this even if no one reads it. This is processing for me, and I know in my heart of hearts, everyone is trying to figure it out for themselves. So go and do that. Do what works for you and what you’re passionate about and take a chance. Take a risk. Break a rule. Press a button. Do something to make your life any different than it is now... Unless you already love it. Then don’t change a thing. I’m A Week Deep and i’m here on a 6 month contract. Should be a fun 6 months. 

Isaac Mason 

[carolsllvn]

SATURDAY NIGHT GENEALOGY FUN: ELLEN’S QUESTIONS – PART 3

[cgxsg-blog]

July 24-30 2017 [Week 11]

Problems from last week carried over to this week but by Tuesday July 25, there was a mutual understanding reached.

The focus this week at work was administrative duties with a focus on asset tagging. I checked all the lab’s assets to ensure that the maintenance qualifications are recently dated. Even though this doesn’t sound like a lot of work, it took me a good couple of days to update everything. I did some of my sequencing duties, however my supervisor was training the new intern so she can take over the majority of the sequencing portion.

Click ‘Text’ to read the rest of the post!

On Wednesday July 26, the lab interns and I went to Ghim Moh for lunch. I ordered chicken rice since I was craving rice. As I walked around Ghim Moh, I realized that an estimated 80% of the dishes were noodles! I ordered a set which came with the rice, steamed chicken, and a side of kailan vegetables.The rice was flavourful since I believe it was cooked in chicken broth. The steamed chicken was refreshing and lightly flavoured, which was fine for my liking since I didn’t feel like eating roasted chicken. Finally, the kailan was delicious as usual. For dessert I debated between ice kacang or Granny’s Pancakes, but caved in to the pancakes. I bought a coconut one and was extremely satisfied.

Singapore’s iconic meal.

3 of my relatives from China came on Thursday July 27! Their relationship to me is slightly complicated as I haven’t figured out the genealogy. They are my grandma’s brother’s daughter, her husband, and their granddaughter. They brought delicious snacks from Xi’an, my hometown. I haven’t seen them ever since I went back to Xi’an 3 years ago, so it was exciting to reconnect with them. Everything was coming along smoothly, until I discovered that their granddaughter drew on my bunny and bear with pink highlighter. I was devastated to the core! I used bleach and water to clean my bunny but there were still marks left. Such tragedy. There are also currently 9 people living in our household.

Then on Friday July 28, the lab interns and I went to Star Vista for lunch. I ordered pork and egg on rice from a Japanese food stall. It tasted great but the only complaint I had was the lack of vegetables. The dish consisted of pork, eggs, onion, and rice. A side of salad or cooked vegetables would make the meal 10/10.

The lack of vegetables makes me sad.

Exercise update: I went back to the elliptical this week after testing out the treadmill last week. This time, I increased the resistance on the elliptical over the course of my workout which allowed me to rapidly burn calories and work up a sweat. I continued with some light weight-lifting and started using the sit-up bench for my core. My abs were on fire every time.

On Saturday July 29, everybody except for my grandparents went to Sentosa. I took the MRT with my relatives to Vivocity first to meet up with my aunt, uncle, and cousin for lunch. I ordered fried beef kway teow which was tasty but oily. For dessert I bought bubur cha cha and ice kachang for all to share. Bubur cha cha quickly became one of my favourite desserts! It was a mix of yams, sweet potatoes, and jelly in coconut milk. Extremely delicious and satisfying. I couldn’t wait to eat it again sometime. Soon. In fact I started craving it ever since I finished eating it. 

Beef kway teow, another iconic Singaporean meal. Lacking Chinese sausages though.

Bubur Cha cha. Sadly all the yams are hidden :(

Ice Kachang because I love dessert more than main courses.

After lunch we took the Sentosa express to Siloso Beach station and explored the beach for a few hours. While my cousin and relatives went on the luge and Merlion, I walked around with my aunt mainly searching for a washroom or water. Fun stuff. We returned to Vivocity for dinner at a restaurant called Dian Xiao Er, famous for their roasted duck. I’ll have to admit, although I’m not a fan of duck, their roasted duck was the best one I’ve ever had. Singapore food hardly disappoints. My aunt and I shopped at Muji after dinner then took the MRT and bus home. I was so exhausted when I returned home that I showered and plopped on bed and dozed off.

Best duck I’ve ever had for someone who doesn’t normally eat it.

I woke up at 9:30am on Sunday July 30 since I was drained from last night. I didn’t do anything for the entire day except to lounge around and eat, except I was still tired. In the afternoon, I finally went swimming after about a month of going to the gym. Surprisingly, I was able to get back on pace. I would like to swim everyday except usually when I get home from work it is already too late. Bye week 11!

C.G.

[fhtess]

Late Week Genealogy Fun: 100-Word Life Sketch of My 2X Great Grandparent

We were visiting my mum and sister in Saskatchewan for a week, so I’m posting this very late. I really like Randy’s most recent challenge : “Write a 100-word life sketch of one of your 2X great-grandparents.”, so I decided on my 2nd great-grandfather, Daniel Spong. Drafting brief profiles is a skill all its own and this one went through several iterations. I wrote the first version on the flight…

[geneajournals]

Checking Errors In My Family Tree

The Saturday Night Genealogy Fun task from Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings is as follows:

“Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1) Have you used helps such as Tree Checker on Ancestry, Consistency Check on MyHeritage, or the Family Tree Analyzer program to check for errors in your family tree?”

Back in 2022 I uploaded an Ancestry GEDCOM to the FTAnalyzer to find missing people in the 1950 US Census. This was the only time I used FTAnalyzer.

Since subscribing to Ancestry Pro Tools I have viewed the Tree checker. I add DNA Matches as “floating trees” in Ancestry, so I am not surprised at the number of people with no documentation. These are my results as of today.

My genealogy software program, Legacy 10, has several ways of noting errors.

You can run a Potential Problems Report to check for problems. The image below shows the types of problems which can be checked.

There are options to print a detailed, abbreviated or summary report. This is an example of a summary report.

Legacy 10 also gives the opportunity to address Potential Problems on the fly. Potential Problems are noted on the Family tab screen by a red circle with an exclamation point.

Clicking on the name in the Family tab will open to the Individual's Information screen for data entry. You can easily see which entry has generated a Potential Problem. Hovering over the exclamation points will give details of the error.

The Potential Problem can be cleared with a few clicks.

[mcphilbrick]

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun

Calling All Genea-Musings Fans: It’s Saturday Night Again –  Time For Some More Genealogy Fun!! Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.  1)   Today’s challenge is to “Share something you learned from a probate file or will that you wouldn’t have otherwise known about.” I agree with Randy Seavers of Genao-Musings. This is hard! Thanks, however, for…

[reesebird]

New Post has been published on https://reesebird.com/2019/01/19/raising-christian-children-part-4-plan-family-activities-that-include-your-children/

Raising Christian Children Part 4: Plan Family Activities That Include Your Children

Raising Christian Children Part 4: Plan Family Activities That Include Your Children

It may just be me, but it seems as though times have changed so much since the last generation of parents raised their children. It is so disheartening to see, read, and hear about children committing crimes are younger; children without both parents in the home more common. What is happening to our society?

I read a transcript of a sermon by the Rev. Billy Graham from a message given about 20 years ago. In that message he outlined six steps that is followed would help keep children from getting into trouble. In this series of articles I am covering each of those six steps. I do hope that you will follow each article and I further hope that these articles will bless you and your family as you strive to raise christian children. Here is Step #4.

Plan Family Activities That Include Your Children

It is amazing to me that families are doing less activities that include the children. The parents seem to be just as socially active, but baby sitters are being hired more and more to take care of children while the parents pursue their desire to “get away”. Are we to believe that they mean by this that they want to “get away” from their children? Unfortunately, the answer is a resounding YES!. How sad. And we wonder why families grow further apart as the children age.

When parents realize that they are getting away from involving their children in family activities they will realize that the main reason is their attitude towards raising children. When they brought their children into this wonderful world, they brought along with them the responsibility to give their children the very best of themselves. To give to their children the love and attention they so deserve and at the same time give them a family that does things together. Please don’t mistake activities to mean, as one mother expressed to me, “Our family does everything together: my husband takes my son to soccer practice three days a week; I take my oldest daughter to dance classes every week; and five days a week my husband drops our baby off at day care and I pick her up. We do everything together.” No, I didn’t give her a definition of “together”, I was too shocked to even respond to her statement. But hopefully, those reading this article are in agreement with me that this example does not meet the definition of a family doing activities that involve the children that is referred to in this article.

Proverbs 22:6 – Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Here Solomon issues a bold challenges, particularly to those who are parents and instructors of children, to the propagating of wisdom, that it may not die with them. Train up children to prepare them for what they are designed for. Train them up, not in the way they WOULD go, but in the way they SHOULD go, the way in which, if you love them, you would have them go. It is true that many children indeed have departed from the good way in which they were trained up; Solomon himself did so. But the early training they received from their parents may be a means of their recovering themselves, as it is supposed Solomon did. At least the parents will have the comfort of knowing they have done their duty and used the appropriate means.

In planning activities that include your children your should first, consider the developmental levels of your children, then plan your activities based on individual maturity level. You can try more challenging activities to encourage them to progress, but remember that you want them to be successful at the activities. You certainly do not want them to get frustrated or bored with the activity. Also remember that your goals for each of your children may be very different. Family activities may be either 1) activities in and around the home or 2) activities that are part of a vacation. Either way, planning those activities for and with your children will make them feel more an integral art of the family.

Here are some suggested activities that we found both fun and beneficial for our children.

Activities In And Around The Home When planning activities in and around the home it will require some sacrifices of time on the part of everyone in the family. Mom and Dad (assuming both work) are usually tired by the time they get home from work, eat dinner (supper for those of you in the south) and hopefully have a little time to relax. But your number one priority should still be your children. Why not set some evenings of the week for family activities (other than taking your kids to sports practice, dance lessons, music lessons, etc.)?

The number of children you have and their ages will dictate what activities will work best for your family. The listed examples we what we used for our family which included three children: 12-year old son, 8-year old son, and 4-year old daughter.

We planned our family evening activities around our children’s activity schedules and usually had two or three nights a week for family fun. Ideally, every night could be used for some type of family activity, but that is not being realistic in today’s busy world. For this article let us assume that you do have every evening available for a family activity is case your are blessed.

In our family, Wednesday night was set aside for church service. During the school year, we had to be very flexible. Not every activity had all the kids involved due to various amounts of homework. During summer vacation time, more consistency in full participation was possible. Exception: our 12-year old was the star pitcher on his baseball team and they played several night a week until the All-Star team lost in the regional tournament. Here is a sample of our family activities in and around the home would ideally be:

Monday evenings: Family Scrapbook Night We put a lot of value in keeping our family scrapbooks. We had a separate scrapbook for each child and one for the family (we also had a scrapbook that was reserved for our family history: genealogy research). This may seem like “over kill” to some, but now that our children are grown, those scrapbooks are priceless to them. As each child left home, they took their individual scrapbook with them. We kept the “family” scrapbook and it stays on our living room coffee table as a proud reminder of our children’s lives from birth to present. We are still adding pages: GRANDCHILDREN!

Tuesday evenings: Family Game Night Our family really enjoyed game night. It gave us as parents a way to teach our children the importance of being both a good loser and a good winner. We live in a competitive world and as our children enter into that competitive world they need to be prepared for winning and losing and how to handle both in a christian manner. We would choose games that would involve our 4-year old. She loved Skip Bo as she loved to count. Yahtzee was another game that gave our 4-year old lots of enjoyment. Our boys even enjoyed picking up the dice when she would throw them across the table and onto the floor. Lots of good laughs: lots of fun for all.

Wednesday evenings: Church Night Where we attend church they have classes divided up in age groups so each of our children have their own class to attend where they not only grow their faith, but grow many friendships.

Thursday evenings: Food Fight Night Just kidding, but hopefully I have your attention now. Thursday evenings we work together as a family in the preparation of a special meal that has been planned (the week before) by our children. We allow them to decide the menu for a four-course meal and then we divide up the preparation appropriately. For example, we do not our 4-year old to handle hot items like boiling water or deep frying. (I guess I just have a dislike for emergency rooms.) One of the kids favorite menus was: 1st course of an appetizer (in this case cheese bread; 2nd course of mixed salad; 3rd course of spaghetti and meatballs; 4th course Italian doughnuts “Sfinci”. Assignments: 1st course – our 8-year old; 2nd course – My wife and our 4-year old (talk about your “tossed” salad); 3rd course – me and our 12-year old (he really got good at meatballs!); 4th course – everybody. When meal preparation was over the kitchen did indeed look like we had a food fight. Great fun except for when it came time for clean up. But again, a great teaching tool for seeing a task through to completion.

Friday evenings: Football Game/Family Reading Night During football season, we would go as a family to the local school’s football game. On the Friday evenings that the team was out of town we had our family reading time. We encouraged our children to read not only during this time, but whenever they had some free time. We would allow our children to chose a book to read and then involve everyone who could read to take their turn reading. As the years have passed we look back on our reading nights as special night of bonding as a family. Many of the books we read came from “Hooked On Phonics” material. We were very impressed with the entire “Hooked On Phonics” program. It deserves most of the credit for developing the reading skills in our children and their developing a love of reading.

Saturdays: Arts & Crafts /Community Service Day As a family we are arts minded. My wife is an excellent artist, I have performed as a member of several symphony orchestras. We encourage our children to pursue their individual interests in the arts. One project we used to lead into activities that are part of a vacation is the creation of a Family Vacation Savings Box. We used a “cigar” box with our kids, but I have not seen a cigar box in years, so any sturdy box about the size of a cigar box should work fine. We decorated the box with pictures of the places we want to visit on our next family vacation. We tape it shut and cut a slot in the top. As a family we developed several strategies for having money available to actually place in our savings box. One that my 8-year old suggested was to take the money we saved using coupons for food purchases. He had helped his mother cut out lots of coupons so it is easy to see why he would suggest this. His mother and I agreed. Our 12-year old placed half of what he earned mowing lawns in the neighborhood. He currently is the leading salesman for a cell phone company and his experience early might have lead to this success. He informed all his customers how he was using half his earnings for helping with the family vacation fund and his client list grew over the years. Challenge your children to help save for the family vacations. You will be as amazed as we were how much more enjoyable the family vacations became.

As a family we are community service minded. Through our church we volunteer as a family to visit nursing homes, help with church and community events, and help many elderly or handicapped church members who need assistance with various tasks such as mowing lawns, cleaning their home, or preparing a healthy meal and taking it to their home. We wanted our children to grow to be caring and unselfish individuals. As we look back at those times we realize how close we became as a family because of our participating as a family in these activities. At first our children were not excited about “helping” other people, but after a very short time, the attitude changed. After each volunteering activity we would have a family meal at a local restaurant. We used the time during the meal to discuss how it made each of us feel to do what we had done. Our children would always mention “warm fuzzy” as a feeling after seeing the smile on the faces of the people we assisted. When we finally returned home we all felt a sense of accomplishment. Of all our volunteer activities, visiting nursing homes was our most memorable. You could see the appreciation in the faces of those wonderful people with whom we were privileged to spend some time getting to know.

Sundays: Church was our primary activity every Sunday. Being able to attend the church of our choice as a family gave spiritual strength to us as individuals and as a family. Worshiping together with our friends was a special time for our family. A time of spiritual growth and appreciation for each other as part of a loving and caring family. After most Sunday services we either had been invited to one of our friends’ homes for lunch or we had invited guests to join us at our home for lunch. Either way, it was a continuation of sharing with other people with like interests and our children strengthened friendships with our guests children. Sundays were truly a blessed day for our entire family.

Activities That Are Part Of A Vacation

So as not to turn this post into the length of a major novel, I will just simply state that the planning of our vacations were done by everyone in our family. It was our goal as parents to choose a vacation location that could be fun for every member of the family. We never had unlimited funds for vacations, but you would have thought by the stories our children tell of our trips that we did. The “Family Vacation Savings Box” money was dedicated to our children’s entertainment and their souvenir purchases. Also, to conserve funds, we tried to plan a vacation route that would include areas where we could visit relatives. (Our adult children now refer to our vacations as “Family Tree Vacations”) This served a dual purpose: saved us money on motels and gave us time to visit with family members we had not seen in several years. As an added plus we could also gather updates for our family history scrapbook.

We live in what is referred to as the Midwest section of the United States. Most of our family live in Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Texas. Two of our favorite destinations were Nashville, Tennessee and San Antonio, Texas. We had numerous activity choices in both. When we went to Nashville, we routed through Kansas City as our 12-year old was a fan of the Kansas City Royals baseball team. So, he wanted to go to a baseball game. Our 8-year old was taking guitar lessons, so he wanted to go to the “Grand Ole Opry” in Nashville. Being as both locations had theme parks, our 4-year old was quite satisfied to ride anything that was slow. My wife and I enjoyed all the selections our children made, we had to as they put up with our visiting the relatives on both sides of the family.

It is my hope that this article will encourage you, the reader, to start involving your children in your activity planning if you don’t do so already. If you are including your children in your activity planning, may this article give you some ideas to give your activities some variety. Raising christian children is such a challenge in today’s world. We as parents should be challenged to find as many methods as we can to involve our children in wholesome activities that will encourage them to consistently keep their focus on things eternal. May God bless your and your family!

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My Computer History

My History, My Memories Saturday Night Genealogy Fun By Don Taylor In his blog, Genea Musings, Randy Seaver suggested that people write about their computer history – basically how we “became slaves” to our computers. I figured, because computers are such a big part of my life, it would be good to share my experience. High School Osseo High School, New Wing – Source: 1967 Osseo Yearbook My first…

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Tag: Anything but Books Tag.

I do love reading the tag posts that surface every now and then. Some are dedicated to awards and sharing the blogger love, and others are about books, music, or film. Today, I’m delighted to take part in the Anything but Books Tag thanks to the lovely Claire from BrizzleLass Books – she loves the tag posts almost as much as me!

So, here goes…

Q1. Name a cartoon that you love

Oh, I miss watching cartoons on a Saturday morning! There was something special about running downstairs in your pj’s to flick the telly on and watch She-ra and Top Cat. Out of all the incredible cartoons of the 70s and 80s I would have to say the Mr Benn still holds a special place in my heart.

Q2. What is your favourite song right now

I love a huge range of music from Guns n Roses to R&B. If it makes me smile, dance, and sing then I love it. I’m also drawn to specific songs if the words relate to what’s happened in my life.

At the moment I’ve got Macklemore’s Glorious playing on repeat. I love Skylar Grey’s chorus as it resonates with everything I’ve been through.

I feel glorious, glorious

Got a chance to start again

I was born for this, born for this

It’s who I am, how could I forget?

I made it through the darkest part of the night

And now I’ll see the sunrise

Now I feel glorious, glorious

I feel glorious, glorious

Q3. What could you do for hours that isn’t reading

People watch!

Q4. What is something that you love to do that your followers would be surprised by

I don’t think my followers would be that surprised by any of my antics as I’m an open book (no pun intended!). I share pretty much all my extracurricular activities with my fans so most of them know about my duel life (fantasy fiction and personal development).

Q5. What is your favourite, unnecessarily specific thing to learn about

Genealogy. I’m fascinated by history but to find out who my ancestors were and how they lived their lives is incredible. It’s like doing a giant jigsaw puzzle as you put together the pieces. I researched my dad’s line a few years ago and couldn’t find my great-great-grandad who appeared on the census one year, then disappeared, only to reappear at the next one. I dug deeper and finally found him. He was visiting his son on the day of the census. Not something unusual until you realise there were no cars and he probably had to walk across two counties to make that visit.

Q6. What is something unusual you know how to do

It’s not unusual but it’s the only thing I could think of – I can do silver service waitressing!

Q7. Name something that you’ve made in the last year

Does chicken pie count? Seriously, my most important ‘make’ this year is my vision board. I make a new board every New Year and use it to motivate me to achieve everything I want during the year. I also run workshops on the topic so I get to see tons of other people create something special.

Q8. What is your most recent personal project

My most recent personal project is also a business goal too. I’m a member of a fabulous networking group in my local area (Socially Shared) and meet loads of fabulous women who have started their own business. Many of them are fascinated by my blogging tales so I created a new eCourse designed to help them, and other small business owners across the globe. I launched my first course in October. Blogging for Beginners: Business Edition is aimed at the small businesses who know they need to blog but don’t know where to start.

Q9. Tell us something that you think of often

Easy! VW Campervans – Type 2 to be specific. I’ve been obsessed with campers for as long as I can remember. I owned a 1975 bay which was so rusty you could see the road through the holes in the cab floor. (The baby in the photo is my son who is now 19!) They represent freedom, fun, and adventure for me and it’s my main aim to get another one in the future.

Q10. Tell us something that’s your favourite, but make it oddly specific

I have to admit, this question stumped me. I looked at Claire’s answer and saw that she’d mentioned her favourite jumper. I had a little ponder on some of my favourite things specific to writing and came up with…nothing! Nope, diddly squat on the inspiration scale for this one. So, I thought I’d share my favourite TV shows at the moment that help me wind down after a writing marathon session.

The Walking Dead – If you want to follow the chat about the latest season then I recommend popping over to Terry Tyler’s blog where she’s sharing her thoughts on Season 8’s zombie action.

Outlander – OMG, I am utterly obsessed with this show! I arrived late to the party but then had the added bonus of being able to binge watch three seasons.

Lucifer – Fun, snarky, and hot; that’s our lovely Lucifer. Definitely a guilty pleasure.

So, there you go. I hope you enjoyed reading my Anything but Books Tag post. I’ve tagged five bloggers who I thought might enjoy taking part, but please do feel free to join in if you enjoyed this, or not if you didn’t! 😉

Terry Tyler

Em Linthorpe

Barb Taub

Hayley Beasley Dye (Just Another Blog From a Woman)

Ritu Bhathal (But I Smile Anyway)

Thanks for visiting my blog, I hope you enjoyed this post. Want more? Connect with me here:  Twitter @ShelleyWilson72, Instagram or check out my Facebook pages http://www.facebook.com/FantasyAuthorSLWilson and http://www.facebook.com/MotivateMeBlog. You can also find me on Pinterest

Tag: Anything but Books Tag #SocialSaturday Tag: Anything but Books Tag. I do love reading the tag posts that surface every now and then.

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Sunday Afternoon Genealogy Fun – The Day Your Maternal Grandmother Was Born — Lois Willis - Genealogy and Family History

Sunday Afternoon Genealogy Fun – The Day Your Maternal Grandmother Was Born — Lois Willis – Genealogy and Family History

Each week on Randy Seaver’s Genea-musings blog he has a post for Saturday night Genealogy fun. Because of the time difference, I have called my series Sunday Afternoon Genealogy Fun. This week’s mission was: 1) What happened in the world on the day your maternal grandmother was born? Tell us the date, the place, and find a newspaper […]

via Sunday Afternoon Genealogy Fun – The Day Your Maternal…