A Grandson Birthday Party

Saturday after soccer games (to be posted later) we drove into town to celebrate a grandson's 10th birthday at my mother's home. I have put the pictures in a slideshow to be able to show more pictures. The party started with cake and ice cream, the birthday boy getting his own individual cake and everyone else ate brightly colored cupcakes. I joked with his older sister that she needed to eat an orange cake and that way if she got any frosting on her no one would notice. Then he opened his presents and was perfectly happy with all of it, including the stack of cash from the birthday cards.

Golden Wheat AHSGR April 18, 2010 Genealogy Meeting

Most of our Golden Wheat Chapter AHSGR meetings begin with sharing lots of good food. More often than not there were be several ethnic dishes. This meeting a member brought a crock of Bohne Beroggi (another recipe) that was delicious, just to name one of the ethnic foods.

The bulletin board had copies of other chapter newsletters...

...and two tables full of random books and information from our library, some of the most used resources for researching G/R ancestors.

Dennis made a wonderful stand for our banner so it can be beautifully displayed whenever we gather for meetings or events. We applaud your creativeness, Dennis.

Harold led us in a couple of German songs, something we plan on doing every meeting.

Then various members came up to the podium to share their "Elektra!" moments in doing their research. Something that broke down a wall or caused information to finally make sense. These testimonies give hope to others that their "Elektra!" moment could be in the turn of a page.

Then Karen shared with us the recent troubles with our Clues publication and the necessity to fill out our family forms and send them to headquarters so we will all get properly published in the next publication.

Next was Dennis' turn to give his presentation on the SOAR program. This is an online searchable database. Information is constantly being added. To find out more click the link above.

The last event was to draw the winner of a painting donated by Jerry Calkins as a fund raiser. Congratulations Joel!

Another GREAT meeting!

My Latest Distraction - creativeLIVE

In a previous post I wrote about taking a digital photography course online. I wanted to share with you what this looks like on my computer. Below you will see that I have three windows open...
...The window on the right is the creativeLIVE window. The upper part of that window is the streaming live class and the lower part is the live chat where questions can be asked during the class and Q&A afterward. The upper left box is for my screen shots. I had started out just taking notes on Notepad, lower left, but I don't type & listen fast enough. I make a brief note with the number of the screenshot that corresponds with that note. That's HOW I attend classes. The classes themselves have been fabulous! I have attended Photoshop classes, Dreamweaver classes... the watercolor class I don't even have a word to describe but I plan on attending the next one in May. If you haven't checked this site out you REALLY should!

A Case of the Blues

I seem to be in a rut lately, a case of the blues. Maybe some leftover cabin fever. Usually that's remedied with some good old fashioned sunshine, which I got btw last week. I was out mowing and working in the yard for several hours many days during the week but we had a rainy day today and a bit of a chill in the air. My son inspired me to post by sending me the latest picture of him...
Now if that isn't cause for a chuckle I don't know what is. But then I have to apologize because his funny get up are ice packs to ease the pain from having all his wisdom teeth extracted. I should have another post soon as that I still have soccer pictures from last Saturday to post and another soccer game today if it doesn't rain.

Expand Your Knowledge!

Have you ever thought about taking some courses? Learn how to better use that nice new digital camera... Maybe learn some new ways to make your website look better... Or just something personal for your own self satisfaction like watercoloring. If you have then you'll want to check out...

creativeLIVE a live, worldwide creative classroom

It's FREE!

The Fundamentals of Digital Photography starts tomorrow, April 7.

Happy Sunny Easter Day!

This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.

Psalm 118:24

Easter Sunday was beautiful sunny day for a family gathering and Easter Egg hunt. Click on the picture below to see the 'paint' buckets that had been full of candy filled plastic eggs that the 'Easter Bunny' (older children) hid around the yard. If you look closely in the tree limbs at the top you will see that there are even eggs in the trees. The Easter basket on the top of the buckets I made that morning from a Sunny Delight jug.

Since the yard was covered by Easter eggs the little ones had to play in the house. The girls didn't mind because it was a perfect excuse to play with the Barbies and the boy had cars so they were equally entertained.
A beautiful day for grilling. Our chef is always trying out new delicious recipes on us. This day he had bell peppers stuff with a chili-cheese concoction. Mmmmm.....

Plenty of food for everyone as always.

Again, click on the picture to get a better view. The children were called out to the porch and then lined up at the bottom of the stairs and finally turned loose to hunt for eggs....

...when no more eggs were being found it was time to take a count. There were 108 eggs when they began and amazingly, 108 when they were done.

The next step was to empty all the candy out of the eggs so the bigger kids could have fun taking turns hiding them for each other.

And it was time to just have fun outside in the wonderful weather.

Hope Everyone had a Wonderful Easter with their families as well!