Yes, I know this is another long post . . .

So, this has been a nice week for our family. We started out on Monday with the Hymases coming over for family home evening. It was nice to see them, let the kids play together, and just sit and talk. We did a little lesson from the new nursery manual (if you have young kids and you don’t have a copy of the new nursery manual, I would suggest getting one. The new manual has great lessons that are just the right length for the attention spans of our kids, and the coloring pages, activities, and photographs and church art are included right in the lesson. You can order it online from the church distribution center, with free shipping, for less than $10, and then you have a family night lesson all ready and you don’t have to scramble to think of something to teach the kids at the last minute. Anyways, we’ve really liked using it for our kids so far).

On Tuesday I had another doctor’s appointment. I am down to having appointments every week now. At my last appointment they explained to me their policy about elective inductions – that as long as the cervix is favorable, you can choose to be induced at 39 weeks up until 7 days after the due date (if the baby doesn’t come before then, then they recommend you be induced, but they say it’s medically indicated, not an “elective” induction if it goes that long). So, I talked to Michael, and we both feel like we shouldn’t do an induction early this time, but that scheduling it for right around the due date would be fine (I don’t really like the idea of having a Valentine’s Day baby). So, at this appointment we tentatively set an induction date for February 10th (the day after the due date). I thought that was a good day – exactly one month after my birthday. But really I’ve felt for quite a while now that this baby is going to come on his own, and I’ve really thought that he would come sometime in the week before his due date, but it’s nice to have a date scheduled as a back-up, just in case, so if he doesn’t come then we won’t have to wait too long after the due date. So, she said that how it works is they never schedule a specific time for an elective induction (because there is always a chance that there will be several other women who need to be induced for medical reasons and they would get in first). So, they call you from labor and delivery the night before the induction is scheduled and give you instructions, like to call them back the next day at a certain time to make sure they weren’t too busy with other patients before you come in. So, it feels nice to have a plan. Although I really still think he will come before that date, if I do go in to be induced, I think it will work out well, as I was induced with Kolby (he was full term and they decided to induce because I happened to have high blood pressure that day), but being induced with Kolby worked out just fine – I have heard horror stories of women getting the pitocin and it causing them to have a pattern of terrible contractions followed by labor stopping, but when I was induced with Kolby the pitocin seemed to work just as it was intended with no problems at all. So, either way I expect everything to go smoothly.

On Wednesday I made dinner for one of the ladies that I visit teach and her family, because she had been in the hospital earlier this week. I tried a simple recipe for a strawberry dip that turned out very good (although I’m sure it is less than good for you). But you just whip together 8 oz of cream cheese with one jar of marshmallow cream, and it is very, very good to dip fruit in. (It’s always fun when you try out new recipes and they turn out good, especially the kinds of recipes that don’t call for a lot of ingredients and don’t take too long to make). Also on Wednesday I did Camden’s night out. I have been running low on good ideas for free kids’ nights out to do in the winter (in the summer, it is always nice to just go on a walk, a bike ride, or go to a playground), but in the winter the options decrease and I’m not too fond of taking the kids to McDonalds to play in their play area, walking around the mall, or going to a toy store just for fun. If anyone has any good winter ideas that are free and are things you can do in the evenings, I’m open to suggestions. This week Camden and I went to the library, which was fun. He was excited to sit in the kid-sized chairs there and to have me read books to him that he picked off of the shelf by himself. But the highlight of the night for him was definitely when we were leaving the library. We were going to the car and I saw a lady down the street walking her dog, so I pointed the “puppy” out to Camden because he loves dogs. That lady must have had amazing hearing to overhear me all the way in the library parking lot, because she turned around and walked over to us just so Camden could pet her dog, which was so nice of her. Although he absolutely loves animals, especially dogs, he was a little shy at first (as usual), but he did get brave enough to pet the dog a few times before we got in the car. Then the entire ride home he kept telling me that he wanted “his puppy,” that he wanted to go to the puppy’s house, that he didn’t want to go to our house, and that he wanted the puppy. Over and over. He was definitely excited to pet that dog.

On Thursday we had a fun, full day. First of all, after I picked up the boys from preschool, we went to the dentist’s office. I scheduled an appointment for Kolby, Eli, and Camden with a pediatric dentist over a month ago, and it was finally time to go. So, we had been to a pediatric dentist a few times before for Kolby and Eli in Milwaukee. We liked the dentist that they saw in Milwaukee, and I thought it was nice that they had a dental assistant to assist each of the boys in stepping up on a little stool, each at their own sink, and showing them how to brush and floss their teeth, and then they both sat together in the dentist’s chair (they were both still little then, and fit fine in the big chair together) while the dentist looked in their mouths and talked to them about brushing their teeth before sending them off happy with a new toothbrush and toothpaste. They thought the dentist was a lot of fun, and I was pleased with the dentist in Milwaukee. It was not until we went to the dentist here that I realized how run-down, cheap, and technically out of date our dentist in Milwaukee was (although he gave the kids good dental care, it was made obvious to me the difference between a dentist who accepts Medicaid and a more “normal” pediatric dentist). When we went on Thursday, the first thing that impressed me was the office. Of course, you don’t need fancy decorations or toy to have a good experience at the dentist’s office, but it was nice for the kids to have something fun to do while I filled out all of the many forms necessary for 3 new patients who were all coming for their first time that day. We walked in the door and a whole section of the lobby was fenced off and decorated like a jungle, complete with trees sprouting up from the floor and a little Jeep that the boys enjoyed sitting in and playing. The walls and furniture were all decorate in a jungle theme and there were plants, statues, and stuffed jungle animals all over the place. When we got back into the room where the boys would be seen, it was a large room with four kid-sized dental chairs in a row, a large fish tank right in the middle, and more jungle animals and decorations all around the room. Camden was especially excited about the stuffed lion sitting in the corner of the room that was bigger than he was. The dental assistants took all three boys in for x-rays of their teeth (The boys never had x-rays in Milwaukee). Then each boy got to lay down on the dentist’s chairs and they each got little headphones to wear so they could hear the sound from each of their individual televisions (that were imbedded in the ceiling above each of their chairs) that they could watch cartoons on while the dental assistants cleaned their teeth. And they used the normal dental tools and suction to clean their teeth (Kolby was pretty excited to tell Daddy that they squirted water in his mouth) – in Milwaukee they just used a toothbrush and a piece of floss. Afterwards the dentist came in and counted their teeth, looked at the x-rays, and told me that their teeth looked good. Then he took the time to give me a recommendation for an adult dentist, since I need to get a crown to cover a tooth that had a root canal when I was in high school. When I called my mom to tell her how cool this pediatric dentist was, she said that every experience they had had was similar to that (minus the jungle décor). So, I guess the one in Milwaukee was just a little low-tech. But either way, it was actually a really great experience, because all of the boys, even Isaac in the stroller, did wonderfully and I didn’t hear a single cry or whine the entire time we were there. The boys were also very excited to pick out a prize at the end of the appointment, and all three of them picked out little red sunglasses – Kolby told me that he gets to keep his sunglasses for the rest of his life.

So, on Thursday night Michael went to go play basketball with some other guys at the church, and after getting the boys to bed I was planning to just lay down and relax. For several days before that I had been spending long hours while the boys were asleep (and staying up far too late at night) trying to do research to figure out who the parents of my 3rd great grandfather, Cummings Gilmore Monk, were for sure. I had come into contact via the internet with several distant relatives on that side of the family, and two of them had given me different information on who his parents were. In 2006 one of the people who contacted me told me that his parents were George Shadrack Monk and Anne Wright. And then recently another relative contacted me with new information supporting the idea that his parents were actually a different couple, Shadrack Peter Monk and Margaret Anne Williams. The second person’s information fit better with the family information I had, and she had good notes and sources to support her research. I was very excited to find this new information! But after doing a little research on the family myself in order to familiarize myself with the research again after a few years, I started to wonder. The information about Shadrack and Margaret is good, solid information and they are definitely the parents of Cummings Gilmore Monk. The only problem is that I have found two Cummings Gilmore Monks who were both alive in the midwest at the same time, and I am not sure which one is the son of Shadrack and Margaret – if it is my 3rd great grandfather or the other Cummings. And with an uncommon name like that, and the fact that they were both born in Virginia within 5 years of each other and then both moved to the Midwest by the time they were old enough to get married, I am assuming that they were probably cousins, likely both named after a common ancestor (maybe their grandfather?). So, I spent a lot of time this last week trying to find out which Cummings was which. I ended up making a chart in excel showing both of the Cummings’ and all of the information I have found about each of them throughout their lives – trying to sort out what information went with what Cummings. But as hard as I tried I could not find any actual source that told me who the parents of “my” Cummings were for sure. I thought that if I put in enough time and effort in researching this, (and after praying about the research and trying to follow through with the ideas I’d had when I did that), I just thought that I would be able to find them if I tried hard enough. So I was pretty disappointed that I was trying so hard and not turning up any good information. So, I had decided that I was just going to have to move on to something else and not worry about that family for now, since I wasn’t finding any new leads and I was getting frustrated with it all. I e-mailed the relatives that I had been in contact with to let them know what I had been researching this week and ask if they had any last suggestions for me. And I was so glad that I did! One of the Monk descendants wrote back and gave me an idea about ordering a death certificate, and she even offered to pay for one of the orders if I paid for the other one (since we have a 10-year range for when Cummings could have died, so we are going to do two orders to find the death certificate, and we think that they will look at a 5-year range for each order). Anyways, I know that all this probably isn’t too interesting to most of you, but I was excited to get that idea and I am looking forward to hopefully getting a death certificate (there is a section on a death certificate for parents’ names, so if we can find a death certificate and if the certificate is filled out with the parents’ names, it will be really exciting!) So, the reason I went into all that in the first place was that on Thursday night I was pretty worn out from all the late hours of research and I decided that I was just going to relax – I told Michael that after the boys went to bed I was going to lay down, watch tv, and not do anything productive at all for the rest of the night. I turned off the computer, watched a couple shows, and went to bed at 10pm, and felt like I had caught up on my rest pretty well the next day. Oh, and Michael was pretty disappointed that when he went over to the church to play basketball no one else had shown up, so he just came back home. He found out today that he had gone to the wrong building, and so I think he will try again next week (the week after this one, I guess, since Eli’s birthday party is planned for this Thursday evening).

On Friday morning I had to go out to the WIC building for a class on breastfeeding, and Grandma had a doctor’s appointment so I had to take all of the boys along with me, even though I wasn’t required to take any of them to the class. So, we got out there and the majority of the class was taken up with general announcements about the WIC program. Then I had to take Camden to change his diaper, and when I got back into the classroom with all the boys they were finishing up what must have been a very short discussion about breastfeeding. Oh well. Not that I really think I need a breastfeeding class anyways – there’s not much they could tell me at this point that I don’t already know, I don’t think. So, after we got out of there, we went to Deseret Book store. Michael got me these beautiful Willow Tree figurines for Christmas and there was one with a father and a son, one with a mother and a son, and one with two brothers, but he couldn’t find a single baby boy figurine to finish off our family. So, I went back to the store and found a different figurine with a mother, a son, and a baby boy, and I exchanged that one for the mother and son figurine. Now we have the whole set for our family and I love how they look. The other thing we did while we were at the bookstore was exchange a DVD. For Christmas we got the movie, The Other Side of Heaven, and when we tried to watch it it wouldn’t work. We could get it to the DVD menu, but then it would skip repeatedly when we tried to play it. I tried it on 3 different DVD players, and it wouldn’t work on any of them. So I exchanged it a couple weeks ago, and the second one had similar problems. We finally did get it to play once the other day, after skipping the beginning of the movie. So I took the second disc back, and told them about the problem. I asked if we could exchange it again and then try to play it on the DVD player in the store before going home so I didn’t have to return again if there were problems. So she opened a new disc and it wouldn’t play on their player either. They must have gotten a defective batch of discs or something. She called the manager and they decided to keep opening and trying discs until we found one that worked. I was glad that the next disc they tried worked (and I was also glad that the one I brought back to exchange didn’t work on their player, so they didn’t think I was just incompetent and didn’t know how to work a DVD player). After that, we stopped for a few minutes at my new favorite store at the mall, Maurice’s, where I got a new shirt on a half-off sale with birthday money. I am planning on saving most of my birthday money to get some new clothes that fit after I have this baby and get closer to a normal size again, but I couldn’t resist getting a couple shirts this month, since they were so cute and on a good sale, and I haven’t bought clothes for myself in so long. Plus they should fit after the pregnancy, so that will work out too. After the mall we headed to Costco, with promises from the boys that they wouldn’t fight, whine, or be wild at all if I let them try each of the sample foods in the store for lunch. It worked out well – the boys started whining once, and I reminded them of their promise that they wouldn’t whine at all or else we wouldn’t come back to Costco for lunch again, and they did really well after that. And it was one of the rare days that the West Valley Costco happened to have lots of samples (for some reason this store doesn’t often have very many samples), and by the time we got through the whole store we had picked up a few items we needed, the boys had tried every sample except for the diet drinks that I didn’t let them try, the boys and I were all pretty full for lunch, I did something that I rarely do – I bought one of the foods that we tried a sample for so we could have it for dinner that night, and the boys were all tired enough to go right down for naps when we got home. It turned out to be a nice day out.

When we got home that afternoon I put all the boys except Kolby down for a late nap, and then Kolby practiced his piano songs before his lesson (it got switched to Friday this week because his teacher’s daughter had been sick earlier in the week). Grandma made it home from her appointment just in time for me to go with Kolby to his lesson. Before Grandma got home, Kolby was kind of concerned how he was going to go to his lesson, and he was asking me if I was going to get a babysitter to come stay with his brothers while we went. I told him that if Grandma didn’t get home in time, I would have to stay home. And before I explained the plan to him, he was quite concerned that someone might take him if he walked to his teacher’s house alone. I explained that if he had to go without me I would stand outside and watch him walk the entire way until he was inside his teacher’s house, and I would call and make sure his teacher would watch him the entire way home until he got back into our house afterwards (his teacher lives a couple houses down from us). Fortunately, Grandma got home before we had to leave, because I do like to go along and listen to him at his lessons. On our walk over to the lesson, he said, “Mommy, if I had to walk alone and you were watching me and someone tried to take me, you would run and get me, huh?” I assured him that I would run as fast as I could and I wouldn’t let anyone take him. He didn’t seem too worried about being kidnapped, he just wanted to know all the details of the plans to stay safe. I wondered about how I have done with teaching him about safety – you don’t want your kid going around being worried about being kidnapped all the time, but at the same time you want them to be aware of danger and avoid dangerous situations. I think Kolby is aware of danger, and he obviously thinks about making plans to avoid it, but I don’t think he’s going around being scared all the time. Things like that are hard to figure out just how much information you should give a small child. I guess that’s how it goes, being a parent, especially with your first child. There are a couple other things I’ve been thinking about lately with how best to teach Kolby at this age. Like, over Christmas, we took Kolby and Eli to see a movie, and before the previews started there were commercials playing in the theater that were meant to recruit people for the army. They showed soldiers shooting guns, and Kolby quickly said, “Those are the bad guys, huh?” How do you explain to a 5-year-old that, even though Mommy has always said that guns are unsafe and people who shoot other people are bad and that we don’t play like we are shooting our brothers or friends, that the people on these commercials who you see shooting people are really the good guys? I told him that they were soldiers, and that sometimes when there is a war soldiers are needed to protect the good people against bad guys (although I don’t really believe that there is really one good side and one bad side in most wars). But it’s hard to start explaining the grey areas, when a year or two ago everything Kolby asked me about would be black and white – Mommy, do good guys shoot people with guns? No, Kolby, people who shoot other people are bad guys and we don’t use guns because they hurt people. I guess there will be more and more of these “grey areas” that I have to continue explaining as Kolby and the other boys keep getting older. There was another one the other day, although less serious than bad guys with guns vs. soldiers protecting innocent people. A couple weeks ago Kolby was invited to spend the night at the Barker’s house. The Barkers have four girls, ages 10, 8, 5, and 3, and they were also having the Adamson’s two girls over that night too. I figured that since Kolby was just 5 he was fine sleeping over with girls there, because it’s all innocent at this age and he doesn’t really see any difference between his friends who are boys and his friends who are girls. Once the kids are older, I don’t plan on letting them sleep over with girls, but now while they are so young I don’t see any harm in it. So, then a few days later we were at another friends’ house for dinner and after Kolby and his friend, Kaitlyn, were playing they both came and asked us if they could have a sleep over. Kaitlyn’s mom told me that she had always thought her daughter would be about 10 years old before she had to tell her she couldn’t sleep over with boys, not as young as 6 years old. So, how do you explain to your 5 year old son that it’s ok to sleep over with some of his friends who are girls, but not with others? Luckily he didn’t press the question of a sleep over with Kaitlyn that night and I didn’t have to discuss it with him – I didn’t really want to tell him that Kaitlyn’s mom didn’t want her to sleep over with boys, because I didn’t want him to start thinking about why that would be. I just want him to stay as innocent as he is now about his little friends forever. I know that won’t happen, but he doesn’t need to be thinking about those kinds of things at age 5.

Well, this post is getting so long that anyone who might have actually started reading it in the first place has probably quit by now, but oh well. I guess I’ll finish off telling about our weekend. On Saturday morning I made 6 loaves of bread while Michael worked on laundry, and then I went over to the church for a visiting teaching interview. After we put the boys down for a short nap (I don’t know if any of them actually went to sleep, and we finally just decided to get them all up because they were all awake and making noise in their rooms after a little while), we got ready and headed to Lehi to visit Mel and Christian and Annette. We had a good afternoon and evening at their house, eating dinner and playing a game of Life. We headed home later that night, and all four boys were asleep in the car before we got home. When we got home, we learned that my mom had been hit by a snowboarder from behind while skiing in Mammoth and her arm had a bad spiral fracture. It sounds good that she probably won’t need a surgery, but she is in a lot of pain and it’s a bad break. Trying to make her feel better, I told her I could Photoshop a picture for her with her skiing off some cool snowy cliff, and she could show that to people as an explanation of her injury when she gets back to San Diego in a few days. Then I came up with an even better idea: a picture of her skiing off a cliff and being hit from behind by a snowboarder mid-air. Hopefully she can recover quickly, because it sounds like this is very painful for her.

So, today we went to church. I reminded the boys before we went inside of one of our family goals, to be reverent in church. And when I said that, Kolby said, “And Mommy and Daddy need to not yell,” (that was another one of our family goals, that the boys and the parents would not yell at each other), so I told him that we would remind them to be reverent in church and they could remind us not to yell. I’m glad to say that Kolby, Eli, and Camden all did quite well with being reverent in church today (and Michael and I did well at not yelling in church today too). Isaac had several loud crying episodes (so that he could leave the meetings at church today), but overall he did pretty well. I took him out for a while during the sacrament meeting (and he was happy in the hallway, as long as we didn’t go too close to the chapel doors), but he did last through the entire Sunday school class, and then he fell asleep in my arms for most of my Relief Society class. So that went pretty well too. . . . so, Michael just turned to me and asked if I was still writing the blog. When I said yes, he said, “No one’s going to read it [because it’s so long].” I told him it’s not for anyone else, just for us. Anyways, I know it’s long, but oh well. . . . So, at church a lady said that her granddaughter was moving in with her and brought her furniture, so she had a couch and two hide-a-bed couches that she wanted to give away because she didn’t have enough room for them. So, after church I called to ask if they were still available, and she asked us to come over and take a look at them this afternoon. We went over and told her we would take one of the hide-a-bed couches, and then when our home teachers came over later in the afternoon they went with Michael to help pick it up from her house. This was perfect timing, since we had been thinking the last couple days that we needed to switch the boys’ rooms around, because Camden has been waking Isaac up at naptime a lot lately and not letting him sleep, but we didn’t know how to do that since Kolby and Eli share a bed, and we didn’t have an extra bed for one of them to move into the other room. So, this little couch was perfect – we are going to keep it as a couch, because opening it up as a bed takes up too much space in the bedroom downstairs. Kolby had already willingly volunteered to sleep in a sleeping bag on the floor in Camden’s room, but we thought this was a good alternative. He now has his own little couch, “his new bed,” in Camden’s room. Our home teachers helped Michael move the couch downstairs, move the table and filing cabinet into the storage room so there would be more room down there, and move Eli’s bed and dresser over to make space for Isaac’s playpen in Eli’s room. We’ll see how the new arrangement works out. We figured that Kolby would be a good match for Camden, because Kolby will continue to nap on our bed during the daytime, so Camden can be alone and not have anyone to wake up during naps (and so he might actually end up sleeping more in naps too, if we’re lucky), and then at night Camden does pretty well anyways and Kolby will also hopefully be able to help a little with Camden not doing certain undesirable actions that have started to become habits lately when he wakes up in the morning or from naps, such as taking off his clothes and sometimes his diaper or climbing out of the crib and turning the table upside down. Also, we hope that Eli and Isaac do well together – as long as Eli follows my instructions not to get Isaac out of his bed without my permission, I think it will all work out well. We’ll see. But it was so nice of that lady from the ward to give us that couch (and such perfect timing), and we were really thankful to our home teachers for their help with lifting all that furniture – I definitely couldn’t have done it at this point.

Well, that’s about it for our week. Tomorrow it is nice that we will have a relaxing day, since the boys don’t have preschool because it is Martin Luther King Jr. day (although Michael doesn’t get the day off work, of course). Also this week I have another doctor’s appointment (I hit 37 weeks tomorrow, (which, for all of you non-pregnant people, means that the baby will be considered full-term and they wouldn’t try to delay labor at all if he started to come anytime after then). And Isaac has his 15-month check-up this week too. So, we’ll keep everyone up to date on any changes with this pregnancy, and hopefully it won’t be too many weeks before we get to start posting pictures of our little Courtland.

Online Archive of Digitized Genealogical Books

So, I am still on the e-mail list for the family history department at BYU and I get e-mails from them every once in a while, usually job offers for genealogy majors. But today I got an e-mail telling about the progress that has been made in digitizing the genealogy books in the collection from the Family History Library in Salt Lake, along with several other genealogical collections. The link to the database is, www.lib.byu.edu/fhc, if you’re interested in taking a look. I haven’t had a chance yet to see if I could find any new info about my ancestors in this archive, but I did type my name into the “author” field real quick, just to see if anything would turn up. It was fun to see the paper that I wrote about my great grandmother, Nettie Dorothy Graham Spohr, and her ancestors while I was studying genealogy at BYU – I had given a copy of my final paper to the FHL in Salt Lake when I finished it, so I knew they had it in their library, but it was fun to see that it has been totally digitized – photos, genealogical charts, maps, and all, so that it can be easily shared with any interested relatives. Kind of fun. (If you are one of my relatives and are interested in looking at that paper on Nettie, here is the link).

An Old Letter

I don’t know if this would be interesting to many of you other than my mom and my grandma and maybe a few other relatives, but it’s interesting to me, so I thought I’d post it. While we visited my Grandma Bev in Missouri this summer I found and photographed quite a few genealogical papers and some old family photographs. And my mom and I spent some time this week reading through some of the old letters I found there. Most of the letters were from Charles Dick to his mother while he was serving in the war – Charles was my great, great grandfather’s brother. But there were a couple older letters from other relatives. One that I found especially interesting was from an Elenor Stewart (I recognized the surname Stewart, but had not heard of Elenor before), written in 1865 to her sister, a Mrs. Giffin (who I suspected was Lucinda Stewart Giffin, my fourth great grandmother). The letter talked all about Elenor’s first husband, who died leaving her with four young children, and then about her second husband who went to war and then died of typhoid fever, leaving her with three more young boys. I really wanted to find out who she was and how she was related to me, so we went to the census records. I didn’t have much luck finding an Elenor Stewart (but I didn’t know when her husbands had died or if she had remarried a third time, so I didn’t know what her last name would have been at the time). But I finally found the family by looking up the name of the youngest son, because it was a rather unusual name – Ancil Mino Stewart – and all of the other family members fit in just right with the information from the letter. (Elenor was listed as Ellen on that census, which is why I hadn’t found her right away). Anyways, after finding the family on several different census records I happened to check the family tree records that have been submitted by other people about their ancestors on Ancestry.com, and I was very excited with what I found. Not only had several people submitted information confirming what I had found on the census records, and showing that Elenor Stewart’s second husband, Thomas Stewart, was the brother of my 4th great grandmother, Lucinda Stewart Giffin, but also several pedigree charts showing ancestors for Lucinda Stewart Giffin going back quite a few generations on some lines – some going back to Scotland, Wales, and England. It is not often that you come across so much information with so little research in original sources, so I was very excited. I still have to go back to Ancestry.com and type up all the info I found, since it was about 1am when I found it and I had to go to sleep. I just had to share that little success.

I typed up the letter from Elenor Stewart, and am attaching it here for any family members who might be interested in having a copy. This letter was old and had torn along all the creases in the paper, and it seems like there was one section of the letter that was missing, which I noted with ‘. . .’ when I typed the letter. (I did not correct any of the spelling or other errors from the original letter).
Enjoy!

“August the 20th 1865
Pratt office Shelby Co Ohio

Mrs Giffin
Dear Sister i Seate My Self this Sabbath Morning to Converse with you by way of pen and ink in the first place we are all well hoping those few Lines May finde you and family well and All of the friends the Same
I receive your Cind and Welcome Letter it was thankfully receive and read with Pleasure i was truly glad to hear from you Alltho Strangers to me but i hope we May become a quainted it is a . . .
i reading them it Seems to pass away My Lonesome ours as you may imagine they are Many you Stated in yours you had Lost Seven of your Children well i Can Sympathise with you altho i have not lost a Child [I] know it would be a greate trial to Lose One of Mine but yet i have waded through Severer trials you know ive Lost two kind Companion My first Husband Diede Leaving Me with four Little Children one Girl and three Boys the youngest was a babe Nine Months Old i was a Widow over four years When i Marraide Thomas he was Cind [to] Me till Death
after the war Comnced he felt it his Duty to go and help to put Down the Great Strugle but i pervaild on him not to go as his health was rather Delicate i told him he Could not Stand the hardships of a Souldier Life . . .
[ve]rry Mutch a gainst My will i thoug[ht] their was plenty of young Men to go he thought he Could Endure as Mutch hardships as the young Men but poor Man he Could not Endure all they [___] to pass through he Caught a Heavy Could witch Setteld on his lungs he was verry unwell when he Came home the typhoide fever Set in and when the Docttor was trying to break the fever he Said he was working a gains his other Disease we had too Doctors Call they Councild together but with all they Could do and all of the good Nursing i Could do we Could not restore his Life Thomas was gone four Months in the Army he Live five weeks after he arrive Thomas was So glad when he got home and we was all glad to Se him but Sorry he was Sick
i am Left with three Little Boys the youngest was three years years old . . .
Son Milliard fillmore next Ancil Mino the youngest
Dear Sister i must tell you that all of my Souldier Boys is home now Safe and Sound as i had three of my Sons in the Sirvis and Lutter is the 4th you may immagine my feelings i feel thankful they have got home there is Several of our C[___]ection that is filling Souldiers Grave
Mr Giffin is a cguainted with Mr Dodds he has too Sons a filling a Souldiers Grave they fell before Atlanta poor [___] how we miss them
our Cropps is pretty Good the Corn Look well their was wheat injured by the wet wheather the Oats is good i will Leave you for this time and if you think this worthy of answering pleas do and i will try and do . . .
Give My Love to all Enqiuirings friends if any their be
Lucy is well and the babe is also
Henry is not verry well
_________________________
Ma[_]vans family is well as far as i know poor W[_]L is not home yet
_________________________
your friend
Elenor Stewart”

Grandma Bev

Also on our move, after stopping in Nauvoo we drove down to Kansas City, Missouri to visit my Grandma Bev. It was good to see her again, and to talk about genealogy together. We had a lot of fun, and the boys especially enjoyed hearing her stories that she used to tell us about “Freckles” the squirrel. Thanks, Grandma!

Getting Ready to Move

This week has been a whirlwind of packing and getting last-minute things done before our move, with some fun thrown in here and there. On Sunday afternoon Michael’s parents and my parents each left, and on Monday Grandma Faun left too. We were so glad that they could all come for Michael’s graduation!

On Monday Michael got his graduation gift from me (and we used the graduation money from Grandma Faun and the money Michael had earned by helping give a test to the 2nd-years a couple weeks ago, and it was still a pretty big splurge – but Michael really, really wanted it and has worked so hard through school these last few years that I figure he deserves to spend some time just relaxing and having fun). So, I got him a Wii. I was always one of those people who swore our children would never play video games (although I do have a secret love of Tetris). But I do like that the Wii has fun sports games that get you up and moving, and that since it is wireless the kids can play too without accidentally stepping on the chords and turning everything off – Kolby is an expert at bowling already! So we have the sports games and Mario Kart, which is a fun racing game – as long as we steer clear of the killing games, I don’t think it’s bad to sit down as a family or with friends and play some games. Plus, Michael was excited to find out that he could play the games online through our wireless connection with his family and friends who don’t live nearby – he has already played the racing game with his dad in Boise, and with the Hymases. So, needless to say, Michael was pretty excited about that gift.

On Tuesday and Wednesday I went to the family history center and had the sisters there help me translate some of the German records that my parents brought back from their trip to the Czech Republic. I am so excited to sit down and figure out how all these ancestors connect, and my mom said she might even be able to come up to Utah once my brothers’ school gets out, and we can both spend some time at the family history center working on it together – it’s so fun that my parents are both getting interested in family history too now.

I have been quite busy this week also selling lots of our furniture and some other smaller things. This week we sold the entertainment center, the kitchen table, another table that we had in the basement, an end table, the breadmaker, and the car. Now we just need to sell the couch, and we will be set as far as the big things go. We’ve also been doing all the last minute things that come with moving – canceling our YMCA membership, getting transfer papers for WIC, getting the tow hitch installed on the van so we could tow the car on our move, making last-minute doctor’s appointments before we move and have to switch doctors, making big batches of soup to try to use up the meat in our freezer before we move, getting oil changes and check-ups on the cars before moving, finding out that the car had some major problems that we didn’t know about that made it un-drivable and would cost more than the cost of the car to fix, posting the car on sale for craigslist for $350 (hoping that we could get more than just $100 for it), having 30 or 40 people e-mail us about the car the night we posted it online, taking one last trip to the Chicago temple before we move, canceling our reservation to get the tow dolly from U-haul to tow our car to Utah, and having someone come to our house as soon as we returned from our temple trip and offer us $500 for the car and then paying us and taking it off our hands right away. Although we were not planning on having to get another car for Michael once we move to Utah, I guess if you look at the bright side of things, we will no longer have to tow the car on our drive to Utah, so that will not only save us a little gas money, but we will also not be limited to the 6 days that we would have had to get to Utah to drop off the U-haul tow dolly, so now we can choose to stay an extra afternoon or an extra day in Nauvoo or at Grandma Bev’s house on our drive out if we feel like it. Also, it was a little annoying that we had just paid to install the tow hitch on the van and we won’t be using it now, but I guess we will tow whatever car we get on our move to Rochester in a year, so the hitch won’t go totally unused.

We have also had some fun this week. Tyce came over and played a bit on Monday night after we put the kids to bed, and the Hedgecocks came over on Tuesday night after Kolby called and asked if Jordan could come play (Kolby and Eli get really excited lately when we let them call their friends on the phone). On Wednesday we got to go to a playgroup at Enderis Park, where we saw Marcela Maas and some other friends. Michael also took the three older boys swimming on Wednesday night while I repaired furniture to get it in good enough shape to sell it. At the playgroup that morning Marcela decided to organize a BBQ for the next night as a little going away party with some friends. She called everyone and got it all organized, and we were surprised at how many showed up since it was planned at the last minute. It was nice to be able to see lots of our friends and enjoy some time together, although people didn’t linger for long after dinner since it turned out to be a very cold evening. After the BBQ, the Hedgecocks stayed to play and Jana and Marie Wells came back over after dropping Keith off at the school to study. Michael figured out how to play the Wii with the Hymases on the internet too that night, so that was fun also.

And today will be our last day at church in this ward. I’m sad to be going, although I’ve kind of been getting used to the idea since Michael matched, so I’ve not been feeling quite as sad lately as I was at first. And this week will continue to be busy too. The pods arrive on Tuesday and we will have Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday to pack everything and clean the apartment. The pods will be picked up on Friday before noon, and we will head out then. We are planning on stopping in Nauvoo, Illinois for a day and then stopping and visiting with my Grandma Bev in Missouri before driving the rest of the way to Salt Lake.

Oh, speaking of Salt Lake, I sat Kolby and Eli down the other day and explained all of our moving plans and answered their questions, and they seemed to understand and accept everything, except there was some confusion about moving to Salt Lake. Apparently Kolby thought we were moving to a place with water, since it is called ‘Salt Lake.’ I explained to him that there is a lake, but that it’s not right next to Grandma’s house, and the rest of the conversation seemed to go pretty smoothly. I think that the boys are starting to understand the idea of moving, although they keep asking me every once in a while if we are moving back home after we live at Grandma Faun’s house – I think Kolby thought we were going on another extended vacation until I recently told him we would have a new house in New York after we live in Utah. I haven’t mentioned to them that they won’t be seeing their friends again, though. I don’t know if I should say anything about that before we go or not – I’ll probably just tell them today that they need to say goodbye to their friends before we move. Hopefully that goes pretty smoothly too.

Ready for Retirement

This month has been so wonderful having Michael home with us for his vacation month. Not only has he been super helpful with the kids and allowed me to get a little more rest most mornings, it has been great for the boys and for me to just be able to spend time with him. I told him that I am feeling ready for him to retire so that we can continue having all this great time together as a family forever (I wish!). We have gotten all the planning done for the move and have started packing some things for Rochester this week. Planning for this move has been a little harder than past moves because we are sending half of our things and storing them in Rochester for a year and taking the other things that we will need with us to Salt Lake, so as we pack we can’t just throw everything into boxes, but need to decide which things we can get by without for a year and which things we have to have with us. But we are making progress – we sorted through our basement storage unit and our storage in the apartment, we have assembled a pretty good collection of boxes, we took many of the pictures and decorations down, packed the china, packed all the things we could from Kolby and Eli’s room, we went through all of our food storage and removed the items that would expire before we get settled in in Salt Lake so we can start using them, and we have packed what we could from the bathroom and linen closet, and a little from Camden’s closet, and I have started to post a few things for sale on craigslist.com. I think the next step will be to pack the odds and ends that have started to pile up in our bedroom since we started packing, then on to finishing Camden’s room. I feel like we’re not too far from getting the majority of the Rochester stuff packed, and then we can relax a bit more until we need to get everything packed after Michael’s graduation.

So, a lot of days this week were taken up by several hours of packing in the morning/afternoon with interspersed feeding, changing, and disciplining of children, and usually a fun family activity like some time spent outside (the weather has been nice) or games with friends. On Monday for family home evening we went over to Jacobus Park and took a little nature walk with the boys around a pond and through a wooded area to the playground and then back to the car, which was really nice. And when we got home Michael gave the boys a great lesson on the creation, after pointing out all the beautiful things on our nature walk that Heavenly Father and Jesus created for us.

On Tuesday I was able to go to the family history center in the morning for the German translation service that they provide a couple of days a week there. I took the scanned documents that I got from my grandparents’ house and the lady there was able to translate a letter and start into another document for me. So far most of the letters just list names that we know are family members from the last names, but the first names are mostly unfamiliar, but I am hoping that if we get all the letters translated that we will be able to figure out who some of the people were and how they were related to us. When my parents come for Michael’s graduation next month they are going to bring the pictures that they took of the headstones and the pages of the parish birth record book they found one afternoon at an archive while on their trip to the Czech Republic, and I can barely wait to see what those records show and am very hopeful that we will be able to find the names of some more ancestors when we look at those together.

Tuesday night was Eli’s night out with Daddy, and Michael had a meeting about student loans, so he took Eli with him. Eli colored during the meeting, then they both went to the library to read stories afterwards. After they got home, the Kearls came over and we had a fun night of games. Then on Wednesday evening Michael took Kolby, Eli, and Camden to the YMCA and I took Isaac with me. Michael swam with Camden while Kolby and Eli had their swim lessons, and then they all swam together. I went to an enrichment meeting at Sarah Lythgoe’s house about cooking with food storage, and I’m still trying to motivate myself to experiment with using some of the wheat and other food storage items in our everyday cooking. For now I feel like I want to keep trying to perfect my whole wheat bread first before adding something else to my ‘to do’ list.

Thursday night was a really nice break for us. After packing in the daytime, we got ready and dropped off our boys at the McMullin’s house and then went and picked up the Kearls. We drove downtown to the Marcus Theater and arrived just at the same time as the Hedgecocks. We all enjoyed a night out at the Orchestra listening to Holst’s “The Planets.” The music was very good. Afterwards we headed over to the hotel across the street for free desserts, which gave us a nice chance to talk to each other. After picking the kids up from the McMullins’, we ended up playing a few games over at the Kearls’ house before heading home late that night.

On Friday we continued to pack and we babysat for the McMullin’s to go out for a date that night. I think Michael enjoyed having an older kid around (their son, Tyler, is 10), because he pulled out his old Nintendo and they played an old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles video game. After the other kids were all in bed we watched Jumanji – probably one of my favorite big kid movies – and it was fun to see Tyler’s reactions as he got excited and jumped up and down during the more intense parts of the movie.

On Saturday we had plans to go to the Hedgecock’s and the Kearls were coming too, and we were all going to enjoy pizza for dinner and play some games together. So, Michael was working on getting some laundry done and I was helping the boys when the Kearls called in the morning, and Faith and I ended up going shopping while Tyce and Michael took the kids to the playground. It was fun – I haven’t gone shopping with a friend (other than my mom) for about 2 years now, I think. After the Kearls headed home, we ate lunch and then Kolby and Eli played some Sesame Street games on the computer until it was time to go over to the Hedgecock’s house. We had pizza and played a few different games, in between playing with and taking care of the kids. It was pretty impressive – by the end of the night we had all the kids asleep at the same time in their two-bedroom apartment: Carter fell asleep in his crib in Peter and Cynthia’s room, and Camden fell asleep in our playpen that we set up next to Carter’s crib, and Nathan slept in Peter and Cynthia’s bed. And Jordan slept in his bed, and we set up blankets on the floor in Jordan’s walk-in closet and Kolby and Eli camped out in there. After Isaac fell asleep we moved him in his car seat into Jordan’s room too. Then, after Camden was asleep we moved him to a blanket on the floor and put Katie to sleep in the playpen. I think we’ve gotten pretty good at getting a bunch of toddlers and babies sleep all at the same time in a small space – we probably wouldn’t know what to do if we ever had a big house with lots of bedrooms and beds for all of us and our friends to use.

And today church went pretty well. The boys did very well in Sacrament meeting and we didn’t even have to leave the meeting except for one diaper change. Then, after dropping the older three boys off at their classes, we substituted for Amanda Hansen as teachers for her 5-year-old primary class. We had five kids in the class, and they made our job easy by all being very good for us. We taught them a lesson about the Holy Ghost and I think it went well. Teaching the children’s class sure seemed to make church go by a lot quicker too. Then, after we got home I stayed home with Camden because he fell asleep on the drive home and Michael took the other boys for a walk around the neighborhood (and gave me a chance to write this). And, just as I was finishing writing, Isaac just rolled over from his back to his tummy for the first time (he rolled the other way a while ago, but hasn’t rolled this direction before). Well, better go get dinner ready. Hope you are all having a wonderful Sunday!

A Little Overwhelmed

Lately I have been thinking a lot about the sheer quantity of things that we are “supposed to do.” Of course, living and teaching our families about the gospel is the most important thing, and should come first. Aside from attending church each Sunday and other church meetings and responsibilities, we need to do things like personal scripture study, family scripture study, personal and family prayers, and other gospel activities in our everyday life. I am not questioning the importance of these things.

And then everyone knows that you should spend time doing things to let your family know you love and appreciate them. We have always set aside Monday evening as family night at our house, and recently we started setting aside one night each week for one of us to have an individual night out with one of our children. We should also be having regular date nights as a couple. And taking time to really listen to the children and have good conversations is really important too.

And then there are all the less-fun, but necessary everyday things that cannot be left for later – preparing and feeding the kids three meals a day, changing diapers and dealing with potty training, and getting the children to take naps and go to bed at night.

And we need to educate our children too. We need to read them good books, eventually teach them to write and read, and do fun art projects so that they will have a chance to be creative. And, our children will eventually need to go to school, too. School, and all the activities that go with it, take up a big chunk of time.

And we need to teach our children now so that they can become good adults someday – they need a good example in these things, so not only do we need to spend time teaching them and letting them help with things like cleaning up around the house, having good manners, physical fitness, being organized, healthy eating habits, being polite to others, money management and having good personal hygiene, but we need to do all of these things too so that our children will have positive examples to learn from. (Oh yeah, I guess bathing the kids and having them brush their teeth aught to be on the above list of “less-fun, but necessary everyday things.”) And we need to do things to keep our own minds sharp, like continually learning about new subjects and reading novels.

Plus we should have a nice place to live. I don’t mean an expensive, spotless, fancy place to live, but a good, clean home where the children can feel safe. It takes a lot of time just picking up after four kids, let alone doing any ‘deep cleaning.’ But I have tried just putting off all of the housework – leaving it for later so I can get other things done, and this just makes me feel like everything around me is dirty and disorderly. So lately I have been really good about getting everything cleaned and picked up soon after a mess is made so there won’t be a big job to do later. This makes it feel better at home, but takes up time here and there all day long. Plus we should take the time to have good music, good books, family photos, and pictures of the temple and other beautiful things displayed in our home.

And then there are things that have to be taken care of – paying rent and utilities, replacing little household things that get broken, getting clothes for the kids that are the right size and are warm/cool enough for the current season (and, if you are on a low income, it is also necessary to take the time to find the best deals possible for purchases that need to be made), checking the mail and responding to important messages, dealing with insurance, car maintenance, and other little things.

And family history. I was a genealogy major in college and love researching about my ancestors. But even though we have been blessed to live in an age when many records are made available to us at home through the internet, this research takes time. And once you get through the internet records and get to a point when you need to do some deeper research, this takes even more time (and sometimes money). And even if you are not working on researching your ancestors and extended family, you should at the very least be documenting your own life and the lives of your immediate family members. Keeping a regular journal (how I justify spending time writing our blog posts), saving and organizing family photographs, keeping a family scrapbook, and eventually finding time for bigger things like writing my life history, interviewing older family members, or collecting family stories.

And we should save some money for an emergency fund (not even taking into account the investing and retirement savings that we should be doing once we have a regular income). Our church recommends building a supply of food storage and emergency supplies, just in case we hit hard times at some point down the road (and every time I watch the news and see people somewhere in the world who have been hit by fires, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc., I know what good advice this is and I think of how I need to add to our little store of food until we have enough to provide for our family in case of an emergency or even just hard times with something like a lost job in the family).

And we are viewed as stupid if we don’t regularly make back-ups of computer files – how would it be to loose all of those precious family photos, videos, journal entries, etc.? So, we need to take the time to back everything up (I went to make backups on CDs of just the most important files on our computer the other day – photos, video, family history documents, etc., not even things that could be replaced, such as music files, and I had just over 60 CDs-worth of files to backup, I still need to finish that job).

And we have fun spending time with friends (especially while we live far from family now, and our friends are our family). We should try to fellowship new people who move in and meet our neighbors. And we should keep in touch with family and old friends.

And if we would like out children to have opportunities to develop their talents, we need to start early. It seems that children who learn to play a musical instrument in their early years are more likely to continue and to play well when they are older. And art, sports, writing, crafts, outdoors activities, etc. – all of these are good things to spend time doing with your family.

And people, especially children, need frequent visits to the doctor (even when they are healthy). Plus, you should make ourselves aware of the warning signs and symptoms of health problems. And, if a child does become sick and contagious, life gets put on hold and you have even less time to get everything done.

And, of course, someone needs to provide for the family, and a good, stable job takes education, which takes time and money, and then after the education it will take time to pay off the debt from school, and then the good, stable job will continue to take time for a long, long time.

I’m sure there are a million other things that could be added to this list that I’m not thinking of right now. And I have really tried to include here just things that we should be doing, not making a list of all the extra things that people could possibly add to their daily schedule. I have to admit that I have been feeling a little overwhelmed lately at the sheer quantity of things that we “should” be doing, and the fact that there is no way to fit everything into the hours of each day that we need to if we want to accomplish just these things, excluding any other fun activities, hobbies, or time to just relax. I mentioned this topic to Michael and his answer was “prioritize,” which I understand and agree with. But if we prioritize and accomplish the necessities of life (food, changing diapers, sleep), and then prioritize and accomplish the most important things (the gospel, teaching our children, and making sure they know that you love them and you love your spouse), then you are still left with a lot of things undone that are expected of you – I don’t really feel like I can just prioritize and exclude things like reading to my kids, taking family photos, doing family history, paying bills, or taking the kids to school when they are old enough.

Often in the morning I will make a list of things to do that day. Today this was my list:
To Do Today:
• Type and print food storage list [I got some new things for our food storage last night and wanted to add them to the inventory list so we can keep track of all the expiration dates and not waste food]
• Put new food storage items away
• Breakfast, feed Isaac [yes, I do need to put these things on the list so that I have something to cross off after spending my morning doing these things]
• Clean boys’ room
• Let the boys watch ‘Super Y’ [they get to watch their favorite PBS show as their reward for helping pick up the house and clean their room]
• Clean bathroom
• Print hand-outs for enrichment activity [I was asked to host an activity for the women’s group at our church, and that will be at our house tonight]
• Empty the trash cans and diaper pail
• Get myself dressed, do my hair, and put on make-up
So, I’ve crossed everything off this list so far except taking out the trash. How many really important things were included on that list?

So, I guess I will continue to prioritize the most important things (and the necessary things), and just do a little bit of each of the other things that we “should” be doing, but never feel like I am completely accomplishing any of those other tasks. I guess. All we can do is what we can do.