Crazy Female Driver

Jessica started yelling and I went to check on her.  She had obviously put the car in reverse and backed off of the pavement and into an area where traction was a problem.  Then she must have high centered and gotten stuck so she called for roadside assistance.

Roadside assistance moved quickly to get a camera.

Jessica was not happy with the poor customer service offered by roadside assistance and was quick to let them know.  However, she was too stuck to offer anything but verbal resistance to the actions taken.

I got her off the rocks, she got out, slammed the car door, and stomped away.

Synonym

Turns Out Mary's Last Name Was Drowne

      There has been a mystery woman in the form of "Mary S." at the top of Jared's family tree for a while now.  She was one of those brick walls you find when doing family history because sometimes you don't have access to the right records and sometimes there just aren't any records.  Well, yesterday I was looking for information on the Bortells line and I found a birth record in Massachusetts indexed by the family search indexing program recently.  Grace Bortells was the daughter of George Bortells and Mary DROWN!!  Yay!!  a maiden name for Mary S.!!
      So I went looking for the Drown family and found Mary's parents, Reuben and Martha and lots of information on the Drown/Drowne line.  Even Revolutionary War soldiers with nice little files of information online.  Then I got kind of into it and stayed up until midnight tracing the lines...  Well, enough about my addiction.
      I had a feeling Grandma June would be a great guardian angel for the genealogy of her family.
      Well, I can hear the little ones waking up so Reuben Olmstead Drowne and his wife Martha Peabody Buckley and their kids Mary Sophronia Drowne, Mary Sophronia Drowne (the first one died as a baby), and Charles Nye Drowne will have to wait at least a little while longer until I can get back to them.  Hungry babies with dirty diapers have to trump the dead.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

This video of the Muppets doing Danny Boy made me laugh.

http://youtu.be/riXcinqDeCI

      The day was a little rough.  Not so much luck.  My iron was too low to donate blood this morning.  Only mildly frustrating for me, I can try again in a few days.  More frustrating was Jared found out that since he had a 20 min. layover in a banned country he can't donate blood for a full year.
      While driving the kids around to do some errands this morning we were in an accident in the parking lot at Costco.  A man making a turn swung too wide and hit the side of my van.  We were both going slow but it still popped the side door in and messed up the paint job on most of the side of my van.  No one was hurt.  We both have good insurance.  I have an appointment Wednesday to get an estimate on the repair of the damage.  Jared says since it's the side door and the back panel dented in then it will be more than a quick fix and I'll have to get a rental car.  Last time we had to get a rental car they didn't have a van, this time I have too many kids to get in anything smaller than a van.  ugh.
      This is the first car accident I've been in where I was one of the drivers.  Also, all my kids in the car.  By the time I got home I just wanted to sit down and cry but I don't let myself do that in front of my kids.
      Jared had to work all day so I still had to deal with all the kids and everything even though I was pretty much frazzled by lunch time.
      Jared promised the kids a while back that we would all go out for sushi tonight.  We went to the sushi place just north/east of the 500 E American Fork exit.  They have good sushi, much better than the place on State Street near the bowling alley here in Orem or the place by Golden Corral (also here in Orem).  I don't like taking all the kids out to eat anywhere because the little ones just can't sit still that long and for some reason I always end up taking everyone to the bathroom at least once and usually twice while my food sits and gets cold.  Tonight, for some strange reason, Jessica freaked out about sitting in the high chair so I also ended up with her on my lap for the whole meal.  It's just not worth the aggravation for me.  Even if the food is really good I don't get to enjoy it.  I think it would be a good place to go with a group of grown-ups.
      It's ten o'clock and I'm exhausted every which way.

Mildred June [Bortells] Grover's funeral

      We flew to Greenville last Wednesday for the funeral on Thursday.  It was a very nice service.  June was laid to rest in the Greenville Memorial Gardens.

There was an open house at Michael and Natalie's home after the funeral and we were able to visit with friends and family there.

Jessica's First Haircut

BEFORE

AFTER

       The hair on the top of her head refuses to grow. The mullet was getting pretty intense.  She also has a "stork bite" birthmark on the back of her head/neck so shaving the whole thing wasn't something I wanted to consider.  She now has a short bob with no bangs (until she grows some) and it looks very cute.  Kinda boy-ish, but cute.  She's almost 19 months old and this is the first time we have cut her hair.  Fingers crossed it will grow eventually.

Unusual (but not that cruel) Punishment

     They told me their rooms were clean and their chores were done and then they went to play with their friends.  Upon opening bedroom doors I found this...

Kylie's "clean" room

Krista's "clean" room

     So I went all crazy on them.

OH THE HORROR!!

      This is a little trick I learned from my mother.  Those suitcase locks fit through the hole in a plug.  This is a TV plug.  I locked the TVs and game systems all up and password protected the computers.  Their rooms have been cleaner and I think they learned a lesson in honesty.  If not, I've still got those locks.

The Financial Situation In Iceland

While the United States is a lot larger than Iceland and I don't think we need to rewrite our Constitution (just apply it for a change) the idea of the kind of financial collapse and recovery Iceland is going through is important for us to look at.

http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2011/08/25/why-iceland-shold-be-in-the-news-but-is-not/

Ron Paul speech in Virginia Feb 2012

Ron Paul Full Speech Springfield, VA Rally 2/28/12  http://youtu.be/gp4fy9txa0A

30 minutes long.  Ron Paul's platform.  If you want information on him, here it is straight from the source.

Maybe I need a blog category for political stuff...
     If you ask me how I define myself I don't think political stuff would come up anywhere near the top of the list.  I've been involved in school government and voted in almost every election from local to presidential since I was old enough to do so.  I have voted Democrat, Libertarian, Independent, and Republican at different times over the years and all it proved to me was that the party divisions don't make sense; my basic beliefs didn't change, the platforms of the candidates shifted.  I did serve in my local precinct as a Secretary/Treasurer but the job didn't seem to actually have any responsibilities.  The President was very hands-on and just did everything.  I guess I didn't mind very much but I didn't feel like that was the way it was intended to work either.
     I wasn't very interested in politics before Ron Paul in 2008.  I still don't think of myself as politically active.  Maybe my definition is off?  I just see something horribly wrong with the way our country is headed and I want it to change.  We've got most of the world ticked off at us and we just keep insisting we're better than everyone else as we set a terrible example of going to war and racking up debt.  We're the bully with the maxed out credit cards drunk on our own power.  It's just common sense... no one wants to be told what to do by someone they can't respect.  I'd like to see us be completely respectable again.