Cucumber Canoes

Something came up last week at a meeting, that nobody else had heard of, I (we) must have had a strange childhood.

A friend said that she must have missed a cucumber when she was picking them from her garden the other day because she found a really really big, one when she was picking them.

I said when I was a kid; we used to take those, cut them in half lengthwise, and hollow them out and float them in the tub, as canoes, for toys.

Nobody else had heard of that, they thought it was one of the funniest things they had ever heard.

Ok, so does anybody else remember any of that?

That makes me think of:

-playing in the yard and making houses in the corn crib, or under the picnic table.

-homemade pies, sprinkling sugar on the dough trimmings and baking it. Yum.

-It also makes me think of picking and cleaning peas, green beans, strawberries pitting cherries, and cutting corn of the cob -Yuck.

But- Eating fresh jam and jelly Yum.

-going barefoot all summer and being able to walk in the gravel without it hurting by July.

OK, your turn what does that make you remember? Make a comment.

Family History and other stuff

Ok, I told myself when I started this that I WOULD write something at least once a week; I have found that sometimes that is not easy to do. Who wants to read about me doing the laundry and going to the grocery store?

I was away from work for 2 weeks, I had to take some vacation or loose it. We didn’t do anything in particular just hung around home and took it easy. I did work on some genealogy and found some extensions of existing branches and some new branches.

I put some family history pictures on flickr a couple of weeks ago. Last week I got a call from someone up by Clare who has been working on the Crosthwaite branch for several years. Her great grandfather was my great grandmother’s brother, so we are third cousins.

There is a feature on Ancestry.com that will show you famous people to whom you may be related. So I found out that my mother was probably not related to anyone famous, but my dad was related to five of the original Mayflower passengers, President, Chester Arthur, Rutherford B. Hayes’s wife, several authors including Laura Ingalls Wilder, Robert Louis Stevenson, a couple of Canadian prime ministers among others. I am not sure this link will work but you can try it.

http://trees.ancestry.com/RelationFinder/relate.aspx?pid=-1754542736&tid=3270021&pt=1

I went back to work this week and had a few things to catch up on, and the millage vote for the library expansion was on Tuesday. We are all disappointed that it did not pass. It has been rather subdued at the library this week. We need to look at the reasons and decide where to go from here.

As training coordinator I am always looking for ways to keep the library staff informed and up to date on new technology and library trends. I found this a couple of weeks ago and thought that some of you might find it useful too, especially if you have some websites that are frequently updated. And in case you do not know what an RSS feed is. This explains it very well, in a very few minutes and it’s easy to understand. http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english

Happy Trails

Frogs and Toad

I have to share this. Charlie came in this morning asking where the camera was. I walked out and saw what looked like a clod of mud or a wasp's nest on the end of a can. As I got closer I saw that It was neither- it's a gray toad.

Then This afternoon he found these: Real frogs in our artificial pond.










I also got an e-mail today from a woman who found some of my family history pictures on filcker. Crossthwaite family pictures. She says she has some of the same pictures. Her great grandfather was our great grandmother's brother. I am in the process of sending her information and trying to add to hers on Ancestry.com.

July 27, 2007

Not a whole lot happening this week. I am on vacation, which means I am taking time off work but we are not going anywhere. Monday, I attended the "Open House" at the Springport Branch Library, not many people there for the open house but the library was fairly busy. I have made a few calls about the library expansion project, reminding people to vote, asking if we can use there names in an endorsement ad. In case you live in the area, and are not familiar with the Library expansion issue. Please check out the library web page. and please support us on Tuesday August 7th.
I went to Lake Michigan with some friends, on Wednesday, not a great day weather wise it was only 68 degrees, according to the bank thermometer, in South Haven. It started raining at about Kalamazoo, and rained on and off the rest of the way there. It was cloudy but the rain held off for a couple of hours, so the kids had fun and we got away and had a nice lunch. The pictures of the lighthouse aren't great but here it is anyway.

Arthur, my nephew has been bitten by the family history bug. His grandfather flew in WWII and his cousin has tracked down a man who was a member of his grandfathers crew so I have been doing some digging for him. I am a little amazed at how much information I came up with from my home computer in just a few hours.

We got a copy of the DVD from Charlie's Whitewater rafting trip, but since I haven't figured out how to post it to the blog yet, I am going to refer you to Youtube for a sample of what it was like. http://youtube.com/watch?v=r_ZAGbWqfqY&mode=related&search=
This is not Charlie's group but it will give you an idea of what it was like.

Oh and one more thing, Charlie has decided to join the 21st century he finally got decided to get a --drum roll please---- TA DA...A CELL PHONE. ;-)

Whitewater rafting and Hornets at home.

Charlie went whitewater rafting, in West Virgina, with the Springport FFA this week. They drove down on Wednesday and rafted on Thursday. and were planning on camping Thursday night and driving back on Friday.
They got caught in a down pour which wasn't so bad while they were on the river, since they were going to get wet anyway. Most of the kids had never been camping before and left all of their bags next to the wall of the tent, so by the time they got back to camp EVERYTHING was wet, so they decided to start back on Thursday night.
I guess all of the kids had a good time, and leave it to us, Charlie was one of the few to get hurt. He got dumped out of the raft and hit his elbow on some rocks, nothing serious but it looked really swollen.
He took a camera but couldn't get any pictures of the rapids because he had to have both hands on the paddles when they went through.

Here is a picture one of the girls took, of him jumping off a cliff.

While he was gone, it was my job to water the horses, while doing that on Wednesday evening I found a hornets nest in the lilac bush, the hard way. I got to close to the bush and must have bumped it with the hose, I only got stung once but boy were they mad. I managed to go out and take this picture this morning. I think it is kind of interesting if I do say so myself.