Two Months from Today

It's Friday. After work and supper (which consisted of a meal of mixed metaphors - Smokey Black Bean Soup and Greek Sandwiches), we decided to head out, braving the wicked cold weather (in the single digits) and have coffee at Barnes and Noble (our favorite date night destination). We were looking at travel guides in preparation for our upcoming trip to see the Incredibles, and then it hit us.

We leave for London two months from today. Exactly. If that doesn't light a fire under your fanny, I don't know what will.

We settled on a Rick Steves guide, and came home straightaway to gather our documentation and fill out our passport applications, look for waterproof walking shoes online, research the weather in England in March, contemplate how we can lose weight and get into some semblance of fitness in two months, and my oh my, I'm tired just thinking about it all. Tomorrow, without fail, our number one priority is to head to Walgreens for passport photos and then make a bee-line to the post office to turn in our passport applications. They say it can take 4-6 weeks, so we don't have a minute to lose.

Dash has been telling everybody he knows that "...my gwandma is coming to see me after JackJack's birthday..." Awww... JackJack turns five a week before we travel, so that is their milestone by which to gauge our arrival.

We have about ten days in country, and Rick Steves has a week-long itinerary for London alone. I know we can't see everything, but we're trying to figure out what we want to see the most. Flyboy is interested in visiting Hadrian's Wall, being a lover of history, and that side trip would most likely have to happen smack in the middle of our visit with the kiddos. There's a lot to consider, including the Incredibles' plans, and we're going to try to make everybody happy. I'd love to think this won't be our only trip, but one never knows what the future holds.

The countdown begins...

Frozen Cranberry Salad

A reader requested the reposting of this recipe - and I guess over time, all my recipes will be reposted one by one since they evaporated on the other site.

There are a few recipes that my family has come to expect at the holidays. And while this one in no way qualifies as a "whole foods" dish, it wouldn't quite be complete without it. Normally, I mix the ingredients together, spread it in a 9 x 13 and freeze it, cutting it into squares at serving time. This time, I spooned it into muffin-liner-lined-muffin-cups and then froze it. This is one of those super yummy/super rich deals where a little is enough,and a muffin cup's worth is perfect.

Enough suspense! On to the recipe!

Stir together in a large mixing bowl: 1 can whole-berry cranberry sauce, 1 can sweetened condensed milk, 1/4 c lemon juice, 1 large can crushed pineapple(drained), 1 c mini-marshmallows, 1/2 c chopped pecans. Spoon into a 9 x 13 pyrex dish OR into muffin cups and freeze. Thaw ever so slightly before serving.

A Sad Day for emptynestfullheart.com

It wasn't an altogether sad day...I actually had a pretty easy time of it at work, the kids being off school, celebrating in one way or another MLK Day. I got a couple of things done, came home a little early, and then sat on the couch watching Flyboy out the window blowing snow, so thankful that he is in good health, here in the heart of winter. My poor friend Lulu - it never fails - oftens gets stuck moving snow out of her long driveway as her husband travels a lot and inevitably misses the biggest snowfalls of the season. Flyboy was supposed to get home late, and I was wondering what I was going to do about the snow in preparation for the small group that meets at our house on Monday nights. Imagine my happy surprise when he walked in the door early! And then, on top of that, our group wound up cancelling, too many people unable to come.

Hmm...no sad story yet. Wait for it...wait for it...

In the moving over here to carol-ing.com from emptynestfullheart.com, I have tried to be systematic, saving and transferring files to their new home. For the most part it has gone well, until today. Today, I clicked prematurely, and, for all intents and purposes, lost what was left at emptynestfullheart. I could have cried. I figured there would still be access to the site until my contracted time period was up (Feb. 25), but alas...it died the death immediately.

What that will mean here is a slow reintroduction of the recipes I shared there, and the moving of old posts a little at a time instead of all at once. It also means that anyone who had read emptynestfullheart and may have wanted to follow me here but hadn't saved the new site name yet is just out of luck. I'm going to try to get the word out, but it is certainly not as clean a transition as I had hoped for. So, hopefully, with the magic of google and the mention of emptynestfullheart enough times, those who want to read can actually find their way here.

A girl can hope.

In the meantime, if you want a recipe from emptynestfullheart, just email me at: iamcaroling@gmail.com and I'd be happy to send it to you.

Tomorrow is a new day,

Looking Back

Last week I started telling a story...starting with our recent travel to Georgia for Flyboy's sister's funeral, and moving backwards. I got interrupted. That happens to me a lot. I can be right in the middle of a thought - even an interesting thought - and something else can just jump in and take over and before you know it, I don't even know what I was talking about any more.

Now, what was I saying?

To make matters worse, you won't even find the beginning (or would that be the end?) of the story on this blog, because I started it over at www.emptynestfullheart.com and have yet to figure out how to move it over here. So, rather than make this even more confusing than it has to be (which seems to be a specialty of mine), I'm going to back up a few more days and tell you another story.

This one takes place on New Year's Eve and involves no alcohol, no partying, and not even any watching the ball drop at Time Square. So what kind of a New Year's Eve is that? Our kind. We are somewhat boring people and feel that if there were some sort of contest we just might win it. But we'd probably only enter if the prize was a trip to somewhere warm (with palm trees) during the frigid Wisconsin winter. Where was I? Oh, yes...New Year's Eve.

We had been watching some NCIS reruns on television - I believe they were having a Tony Dinozzo marathon, when Flyboy decided he couldn't handle any more excitement, and opted to head to bed. Being a true multi-tasker at heart, I had been dinking around on my laptop while we were watching Tony and McGee and Abby and Officer David and Jethro and Ducky, which is my normal routine. I think it assuages some sort of guilt stemming from the notion that watching TV simply for the sake of watching TV is nothing but a waste of time. Doing something *constructive* like simultaneously surfing the web makes me feel better. So, having just the day before met with a most interesting lady about what it takes to join the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution), I was looking at their website when Flyboy announced he was calling it a night. "Right behind you," I said.

I was getting ready to sign off, but then, right there in the library section of the DAR website, I found it.

I found the ancestor search database. And the descendant search database. I knew about my patriot ancestor - Ebenezer Bartlett, who had fought in the Revolutionary War - but after meeting my new friend from the local chapter of the DAR, and seeing that she had SEVEN patriot ancestors, I had a thought. Doesn't it make sense that if you have one patriot ancestor, chances are you might have more? There are many people in my line who were here in the 1700s and before, so I decided to start typing names into the ancestor search database.

You won't believe what I found.

I don't even believe what I found.

When a woman joins the DAR, she must provide evidence of her lineage all the way back to the patriot ancestor. The first couple of generations are not that hard to document. We live in a country and in a time where good record keeping is the norm. We can order copies of birth, marriage, and death certificates. We can locate records proving land ownership. But the farther back you go, the harder it gets. People were often born at home. Records were lost in fires, or were not stored in manners conducive to preservation. The beauty of the ancestor database is that if a DAR member has already proven lineage in the past, their verified research can be used if you come from the same line. I found that Ebenezer's son James, and James' son Ebenezer had already been documented by someone else, so I won't have to prove those links. Score!

Then, feeling lucky, I decided to check on some of my other ancestors and try to determine if any of them had been documented here.

You won't believe what I found.

I don't even believe what I found.

Are you sitting down? I found 14 - yes, you read that right - FOURTEEN patriot ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War. I was riveted to my keyboard, racing through page after page, finding person after person - and detailed information about where they served, with which company, and so forth.

Before I knew it, it was 2:00 a.m. Not normally being a night owl, I was in a state of disbelief all the way around when I glanced at my watch and realized I never made it to bed. But I was wide awake and electrified with energy as I clicked and read.

Then I had an idea. My DAR friend replied to my comment that we had family that had been here since before the 1700s with this: "If you have family that far back, someone was most likely on the Mayflower." Remembering that I have had this one little nagging doubt regarding one family line that could lead to the Mayflower (Rachel Butterfield - Jonas Butterfield - Timothy Butterfield), I decided to look them up on the descendant database to see if any research had been done on this line. My problem in this line has been that there were more than one Rachel and Jonas Butterfield, born around the same time and in nearby proximity to one another. Finding THE Jonas who was THE son of THE Timothy and THE father of THE Rachel has been alluding me for some time. If my Rachel really was the granddaughter of Timothy, then a connection going back from there to the Mayflower could be claimed.

You're not going to believe this.

I still struggle to believe it.

But right there on the DAR database was the link I have been looking for - my Rachel really is the granddaughter of Timothy, whose line leads back to John Alden and Priscilla Mullins of the Mayflower.

Unbelievable.

I was giddy, and it took all I had to not run into the bedroom and shake Flyboy awake to share the news. And once I finally did silently sneak into bed, I thought I'd never get to sleep. About the time I was about to drive myself crazy counting backwards from one million, I finally fell asleep.

And then the phone rang. At about 5:15 a.m. With news. It's interesting that calls at 5:15 are usually connected with the beginning of life or the end of life. This time, is was the end. Flyboy's sister had passed. Mercifully, she was able to celebrate one last Christmas with her family and had actually rallied a bit that day. We shed some tears and tried to get a little more sleep. The report of my findings would have to wait a little longer.

Gigi and Peanut

When Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm got back from a trip to Florida last weekend, Peanut was quite sick...double ear infection, cold, cough...poor little thing. And her poor sleep deprived parents parents had been up with her multiple nights in a row, so I went over for a couple of hours on Sunday to give them a chance to nap.

Peanut was miserable, and after walking the floor with her and singing softly into her ear, she finally went to sleep. We settled into the rocking chair and her mommy came in later and snapped this picture.

I'm happy to report that she is feeling much better.

One Little Click

It's amazing what you can do with one little click of the mouse. You can send an email in an instant and spend a lifetime regretting words spoken in haste. You can connect with friends and family all over the world. You can learn something new. You can win (or lose) a game of Solitaire.

Guess what I did with just one click of the mouse?

I secured tickets to London! We are heading to the UK over spring break to hug our daughter and her family and see where they live and see what they see and eat what they eat and meet who they know. Flyboy lived in Germany for awhile as a boy but I've never been out of North America. I can't wait.

For all the things I'm looking forward to, I'm mildly terrified at the thought of riding on the left side of the road. There are certain things that just don't work in my brain. Transposing music on an electronic keyboard or playing the guitar with a capo does not work for me because I simply cannot hear a D in my head while I'm playing a C. In the same way, I'm not sure I can convince my brain that riding (forget driving!) on the left side is okay. The cognitive dissonance may just prove too great.

But aside from that, I'm looking forward to the pastoral countrysides, the ancient architecture, talking to little boys with ever increasing British accents, seeing ministry in England firsthand, and all the things I can't even begin to imagine.

We are flying non-stop out of Chicago. After our last fiasco (taking the long way to Jacksonville), I am thankful we don't have to worry about making any connecting flights.

And while we've been able to connect with our kids on Skype even though they are so far away, it will be better yet to be there in person. I can't wait to hear Dash pray and JackJack read and see Elasti-girl's creations (from curtains to pillows) and watch Mr. Incredible in action, being the hands and feet of Jesus to those around him. Before we know it, ten weeks will have passed and we'll be there. Just like that.

Welcome!

It's a new year, and I feel like a change. I've been blogging for the past two years at Empty Nest Full Heart, but am starting over here for several reasons. First, I'm cheap. I'm tired of paying the big bucks "over there" for a site that I'll never be smart enough to customize anyway. Second, I think I want to move past the empty nest persona and spend a little more time exploring my other interests. For example, I'm in the process of joining the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) and am busily gathering documentation to prove my connection to 14 patriot ancestors. So, rather than write an empty nest blog (with other things thrown in every now and then), I think I'll just embrace the freedom to write whatever I want to. And, whenever I want to. At Empty Nest Full Heart, I committed to writing every day, but now, I think I'd like to step away from that pressure. Who knows - I may still wind up writing a lot anyway, but having given myself permission to not write until I have something to say feels quite liberating.

Some things never change, though, and there will still be plenty of talk about the grandkids, and I'll still be tracking Flyboy's ongoing health issues. I've had the most readers when he's been in the middle of a crisis, so I told him he's going to have to step it up a little more often (just kidding).

And finally, just like at Empty Nest Full Heart, your comments and thoughts are always welcomed. I wish I could offer contests and cool prizes, but I hope that community and friendship will bring you back.

Love,