Book Squirt

Category Archives: My Life

Driving and #DadChat

I’m learning to drive right now, and I recently witnessed a fatal accident. Seeing something like that will drastically change the way you look at things, and now I’m even more cautious behind the wheel.

Since I’ve had that experience, I’ve thought a lot about driving and accidents. When Bruce Sallan from #DadChat talked to me about co-hosting a twitter chat with him, I jumped at the chance to share my story and what we learned from this accident.

I hope you can join us at #DadChat on Thursday, November 21st, at 9:00 EST! If you’ve never joined a Twitter Chat before, I found this post explaining how to do it. 🙂

Hopefully I’ll see you there!

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The Posture Games

Sorry for my absence, everyone, but I’ve had tons of guests staying with us the past couple of weeks and I haven’t made the time to get away to write.

But I had to come back to share this. We were doing this tonight, and it’s been absolutely hysterical.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Week In Tweets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Week In Tweets

Famous Ancestors

My Dad’s parents, Grammy and Gumpy, recently came for a visit. We don’t get to see them too often so when we do, it’s really cool. Well, this visit was really, really cool.

Gumpy has done tons of research on our ancestors – he’s written books about his ancestors and Grammy’s ancestors. When he came to visit this time, he brought several things. He brought each of us a folder showing our ancestors who were on the Mayflower and all the people in between, and he brought us a model of the Mayflower!

The younger kids weren’t too excited about the piece of paper with names on it – they were too interested in the model ship. But Colter, Emery, Fletcher and I were excited about our genealogy. We had at least fifteen ancestors on the Mayflower, possibly more!

Do you recognize the name Priscilla Mullins? We’re related to her.
John Alden? We’re related to him.
Stephen Hopkins? We’re related to him.
John Howland? We’re related to him.

Priscilla Mullins was one of the few girls on the Mayflower. She was also one of the oldest, almost old enough to marry. She married John Alden later, and they are my Grammy’s great, great, great, great, (you get the picture), grandparents.

Stephen Hopkins and his daughter Constance are related to Gumpy – Constance’s daughter married Thomas Rogers, and that’s Gumpy’s family name.

John Howland was an indentured servant to John Carver, and he became a freeman when Carver died. He later married Elizabeth Tilley, and their daughter is related to Grammy. This was probably the ancestor I was most excited about – I’ve read a book from the POV (point of view) of Elizabeth! It’s called The Mayflower Secret, and it’s a Trailblazer book. I’ve always enjoyed the Trailblazers, but now I’ll enjoy this one even more, knowing that the girl in it was my great, great, great, (how ever many greats) grandmother!

I’m so happy that Gumpy brought us those papers and showed them to us. I’m going to have to look up more about my ancestors now – I enjoyed learning about them before, but now? I want to learn all I can!

What about you? Do you have any famous ancestors?

 


  
 
 

A picture of the two books that Gumpy wrote:

Birthdays, Grandparents, and the Fourth

Most families have a busy month where there are several celebrations. For us, ours is July. Jade’s birthday is the 4th, Colter’s is the 5th, and Fletcher’s is the 12th, while Mom and Dad’s anniversary is the 8th.

Right now all of the grandparents are here (which is awesome!) and we’re busy celebrating birthdays, so I don’t have a lot of time, but I thought I’d just check in and say that I hope everyone had a safe and fun Fourth Of July!

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My Week In Tweets

My Week In Tweets

This week I:
-Had a blast with our friends from NJ that we see once a year.
-Laughed when Indigo suckered Thomas into carrying her around the track because she wore sandals.
-Made fun of Dora the Explorer with our friends.
-Went with the boys to track practice.
-Kept everyone hydrated while they moved over 400 bales of hay.
-Taped glow sticks to a football and then played a game with it.
-Watched Les Miserables with Mom and Dad.
-Caught my little sisters sleeping in Indigo’s bed together.
-Burned the nachos – our new oven is more powerful than our last!
-Freaked out about actually driving on the road.
-Survived driving!

My Week In Tweets

This week I:
-Took a shower in my own bathroom!!
-Spent a half an hour cleaning my bathroom just so I could be in my bathroom.
-Um, whined about the weather, my computer updating, and work. *sigh* Not a good week. LOL
-Realized that I was halfway to 17.
-Got the canvas I ordered!
-Brought Ginger up to Scottsburg! And took a picture of her in my new room.
-Had some great pasta for dinner.
-Went to a wedding with the family. I like weddings. 🙂
-Found a bunch of pictures of me and Dad for Father’s Day.
-Found out that our friends from New Jersey were coming to visit!
-Got a picture of me with friends at the wedding on Saturday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Week In Tweets

This week I:
-Went to track practice with the boys and got a cute picture of Hewitt talking with Coach Sweetland.
-Got excited to see an article about my family on the Huffington Post website!
-Scheduled my drivers ed driving times during my twitter chat for writers (that’s what the #StoryDam is.)
-Got scared to death by my cat racing at me in the dark.
-Ate my lunch on the back porch because they were repainting parts of the kitchen.
-Cleaned the kitchen, put the food away, and lined our cups up.
-Um… stole some onions from the grill before dinner. *cheesy grin*
-Got a bathroom sink!!
-Found a hole in my sock that hadn’t been there that morning!
-Started a Dolphin puzzle with the family.
-Took a video of the bunnies eating their breakfast and the goats trying to break into the milkroom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Week In Tweets

This week I:
-Was thrilled to get a temporary toilet in the basement!
-Had a jar of awesome pickles from Aunt Mary Jane for lunch.
-Went to the boy’s track meet, got tricked into running with a little kid on our team, and then forgot to stretch. LOL
-Went home to feed the cats and shower.
-Said goodbye to our dance class instructor and met our new one.
-Got stranded in the barn during a ridiculously strong rainstorm.
-Watched Shark Tank.
-Talked about musicals with a friend for almost a half an hour.
-Made cookies for the kids.                                                                                             -Got a stack of books from a friend of mine!
-Squealed like a little girl when I heard that NCOBS wanted to tell people about my Outward Bound recap!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Week In Tweets

This week I:
-Listened to my siblings sing in the car.
-Started my load of laundry without my siblings fighting me to start theirs.
-Got shelves put up in my new room.
-Put our footprints in the concrete porch of the barn.
-Unpacked!
-Went with Jade to a friends house while everyone else was getting Zephyr from the hospital.
-Moved into the new house!
-Realized that moving into the house without plumbing means that I have to go to the barn to use the bathroom. *sigh*
-Got up fifteen minutes earlier than I had to so I could get some peace and quiet.

 

 
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My Week In Tweets

This week I:
-Got an awesome book from the library and finished it that day.
-Watched my little siblings goof around with Styrofoam and took pictures.
-Had subs on the back porch of the new house.
-Found out that one of our rabbits was a male, not a female as we’d thought.
-Listened to my brothers make a really funny mad-lib.
-Mourned the Spring that never happened.
-Discovered a really yummy lunch.
-Cooked chicken on the griddle. Not the best way to do that. 😀
-Started moving things into the kitchen!
-Bought picnic tables for the back porch and had hamburgers there.
-Tried to block out the music in the car so I could write. John Denver is really hard to resist.
-Went to Chillers (an awesome Ice Cream place) and met our friends there (it was a surprise!)
-Cried when I heard about Oklahoma.

Yeah. It was a busy week. 😀

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My Week In Tweets

This week I:

-Started handwriting a book. For the first time ever. It’s interesting, but I LOVE it. 😀
-Went to a graduation party with a dunking booth, lots of food, and football games (that I got to referee).
-Started packing my room! It’s about half way packed now.
-Managed to get over 2k words in my new notebook.
-Found my little sisters sound asleep with their light on.
-Signed up to completely redo our church song book.
-Found out that Skye was sending me books!
-Changed my blog schedule to make it easier for me to handle. 🙂

 

 
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We’re so Lucky

One day, the kids weren’t allowed in the new house. They had put the carpet padding down the night before, and one of the kids had tracked mud all over it. The carpet guys weren’t very happy with that, so the kids weren’t allowed in the house that day.

Well, I went to find Hewitt (who was hanging out with the workers while they were eating lunch) and they asked me what I thought of the progress they’d made that day. I told them that I wasn’t allowed in the house because of the kids tracking mud in, so I hadn’t seen it.

I was really bummed that I wasn’t allowed in, because they had put the carpet down in some areas and they had gotten some of the lights up. But I knew that I’d be able to see it that night once the workers went home and Mom and Dad could come with us.

One by one, the workers finished lunch and went back to work. I was just about to go back to the soaproom when Rick, one of the electricians, (and a really nice guy) came out and said my name. “Could you come in and answer a question for me? I don’t want to get your Mom or Dad if I don’t have to.”

I figured that since I was answering a question (and I wasn’t going to track mud in) that wouldn’t be a problem. So I walked in behind Rick, looking around as we walked up the stairs.

“Does this hallway look better with lights and carpet?”

He laughed as I looked around, so excited to see it. I hadn’t really seen the carpet before (just the sample), so it was all brand new to me. I told him that yes, it definitely looked better with lights and carpet. 🙂

This is the same guy who stayed late one night to put the ceiling fans in ALL of the kids bedrooms so no one would feel left out. Yes, he’s awesome. 😀

There’s so many other things that Lucky and his guys have done for us. This is just the most recent one. We are SO incredibly lucky to have Lucky and his guys working for us.