This and That

I don't have any new photos to post....maybe later if I make enough progress on the painting. Here's a bit of random info on what's happening around here.

Today Heather learned she has earned her letter jacket through her participation in band. She has spent much of this evening browsing the brochure to decide which patches she'd like to order with it. Way to go Heather!

Heather's making my head hurt! She's working on a family tree project for school. Should be easy enough right? (especially considering she's an only child and the project doesn't require she go back many generations, etc). But no, on this she wants to overachieve. I said, "do you KNOW how many people are in my family and your dad's family????" But we helped her with what we could. It was funny watching her write names down in wrong places because we knew she had them with the wrong family members. For instance, she wrote my father's name down, and in the boxes next to his name wrote the names of my MOTHER'S siblings! Marty and I chuckled and helped her correct it. She did the same thing again when writing the names of my step brother's children. She put them with the wrong parents. I finally decided it would be easier if I wrote down all the families that go together and she could transfer the information to her boxes. And as I write this post, I realize I completely forgot to write down my dad's family's information! I'll definitely need another sheet of paper...or three! She called her granny to get info on Marty's side of the family and Granny told her to just come down and she'd help her, it would be much easier than on the phone. Lucky for Heather she lives so close!

As I wrote down my mom and her 5 siblings' names, and all their children (and I remembered ALL of them!), it made me realized just how blessed I was growing up so close to so many family members. There was always someone around, always someone to play with or wrestle with. Heather doesn't have that and it makes me sad for her. Very few of my family members on both Mom's side and Dad's side, live very far from West Plains, Missouri. I've always teased that I had to move all the way to Arizona to find someone not related to me!

I'm off to see how many of Dad's family members I remember! It's when I reach all my many cousins' children that I run into problems. We've all grown apart so we don't know each others' families anymore. We were all so close growing up that it saddens me to realize how few of their kids' names I even know!