A Good Movie for History

Homeschoolers (and others:) : If you can find the movie Lafayette-The Lost Hero, it is a good one to watch for US / French Revolutions. And to know why there are so many places n America named Lafayette. I watched it on Netflix. Also, I watched the Revolutionary War series documentary. A good watch for anyone who wants to have a review of our country's beginnings. If you don't have time to watch all 13 episodes, watch the last two. They are a review of all.
If you type in Revolutionary war, you will come up with more. I have them in my queue.

We signed up for Netflix a couple months ago for the base plan. It is so nice to watch TV without commercials! Of course, we watch oldies, but we can  also watch them without too much embarrassment, also.

family research

I have been working on the family tree now since November 2010. I have found out so much, sometimes it is mind-boggling. But, exciting. I am now at the point of putting each family line into a booklet form for my parents. I thought I could make, for example, Jo's Family, then include the ancestry back as far as I could , then add the descendants at the end to connect the two lines. I made one for Steve's mom and it looks pretty good. Photos along the way, makes it less wordy.

When you run off a ancestral chart, there are a lot of repeats, which is good in its way, but for the book, I am taking out the repeats and instead of going by generations, I am going by family name (surname).

As I find items in the past, sometimes I am finding stories about our g-g-g-g-g-g grandparents. So, I am also getting people and story ideas for a new novel!

not posting much

I think of so many things I want to post, but alas, I don't get around to posting them.
Maybe after I finish the family forest I can get back to posting here. Yes, I am now calling it a forest. It is no longer just a family tree. But, I am having so much fun doing this project I've wanted to do for 30 years. The neatest thing I found so far is that I have double gggg grandparents for both lines lead to my family on my father's side and my mother's side by 2 of their daughters. Their other sister, also leads back to my family in another direction. Actually, another generation back, the line leads down to my step-father's side, also.  :)  And I say all this with a BIG IF. IF I am doing all this correctly, ... so it will be a while before I research it all enough to know all these things for sure.

Family Research

I just met with an 80 yr old lady who has researched for years, one line being my family on is my Mom's side. She GAVE me her research, along with 3 books written by someone on another side who included the my family. I think I hit the jackpot! :)

I have had so much fun doing this project. I have learned much about my gg grandparents and other relatives. I can't wait to see it all compiled in a book! But, I have to, because it is going to take a long while.

Virtuous Women

Today, I am going to talk about two sites. Both are two of the most virtuous women I know. One I met recently and is a few years older than I am and a long-time pastor's wife. The other one I knew when she was a child. Check out their pages. Both have a lot to share about living the life God wants us women to live.  Barbara also has another site where women meet and share. Ask her about it!

Authentic Virtue   and   Barbara's Bakin N Bits

Cinnamon Rolls

An Adams' family tradition, for this Adams family, at least, is cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning. I started that so we could eat them while opening gifts and have breakfast later. If we got around to having breakfast. Usually, Christmas dinner was ready early because I put the turkey in too soon.
Sometimes, they were home made and sometimes 'pop-can' ones, but we had them each Christmas morning. I am glad our daughters try to carry on the tradition. Traditions have to start somewhere, right?
... home made ones are rising right now. This year, we are spending Christmas Eve with my mom and Christmas Day with his family, so I made them today, so we can enjoy them and save some for Christmas morning, also.

Wow, I actually got ambitious to get them done! What are some traditions your family does for Christmas?

Updated Web Page

While on our trip someone showed me how to make easier web pages. I knew there were ways, but I kept using the HTML code because I had my own templates and all I had to do was change the wording. That is why our web page looks so much the same. But, then they say your web page is not supposed to change so much from page to page and confuse people.
Anyway, the new way is with Wordpress and being I already had it on our web page as a blog, I have been playing with it for making web pages. If you want to check out what I have done, you can go to our web page, then click on the S&B Blog to see it. The blog comes up and at the top are the links to the pages I've made so far. http://www.belindajo.com/  One of those pages is the diary of our trip with photos. We were finally able to go see the grandchildren .... and their parents. :)

Happy Birthday, America!!

God bless America and help us, please!


Tomorrow is not only USAs birthday, but our first daughter's and our first grandson's. In fact, we celebrate for a few days. With one of Steve's sister's birthday being June 30th, then Steve's and a niece on the 2nd. Then our daughter and grandson on the 4th and our other daughter and the niece's daughter on the 5th!

And, yes each of our daughter's got their own day. And their own cake. Though, I did bake two layers and decorate a layer each day, so we would not have so much sweet stuff around.

And for birthday parties, we chose special years to celebrate with others coming over. After their 1st birthday and the bi-centennial one for both of them, we did not want to do a party every year, so we chose 6yr, 9yr, 13th and 16th. On their 13th they had a slumber party.

Anyway, Happy birthday to all who celebrate with America.

e-cousin

Tonight I met my e-cousin. After my parents divorced when I was a small child, I did not grow up with or know my cousins on my father’s side. About 12 years ago, one of them and I met over the internet. We neither one can remember just what led up to the meeting, but during the years, we have kept in touch off and on and more often as the years went on. She has ‘followed’ us as we moved to Alaska, Germany then on to Utah and now to Georgia. I have ‘followed’ her through her ministry and acting career. All online.

Last May we retired and moved to my parents’ home town, where a good many of my cousins live. This weekend is the reunion for my father’s side and I got to go to a supper tonight and meet all these people I do not know and hopefully get to know them!

I was out on the back porch eating and heard that my e-cousin had arrived. I gave her family time to get in the house and say hello to ones close at hand, then I walked into the dining room and stood watching her for a few seconds before she noticed me. It was so exciting when she looked and realized I was there. She did not expect me until tomorrow for the reunion. We were finally face to face and could hear each other’s voices instead of chatting online or reading emails. Don’t know why we never picked up the phone, but we had not. Well, we finally got to meet! Her parents informed us that we did meet when we were younger (20+ years ago) but it was for only a few minutes and did not know each other back then. Now, we do.
It is so nice to be home.

The photo is the two of us with our younger writer cousin. Belinda, Ariel & Laura