What happened in March

So March was a little bit crazy around here.... So crazy that I didn't even write one blog post.  I spent the month trying to get our tax information all finalized and to our accountant, cleaning and organizing the house, and working on the backyard in the few moments that it was NOT raining.  And then we left for 9 days in Salt Lake City for spring break, which always means lots of work getting things organized, clean and packed for 9 people.  To top that off, I re-strung all 47 strings on Aubrey's harp to prepare it for getting regulated.  That was an entire day's project all by itself.

We also had a bunch of days with morning snow in March, and when that happens, I am just all crazy watching the weather (not the TV weather, I mean my weather station and online satellite images) to try to figure out what is going to happen.  That distracts me from doing other things I should be doing.

Another great thing I got hooked on last month was online genealogy indexing with Familysearch.org.  I discovered I have a gift for reading really old cursive.  I have loved deciphering ship manifests of passengers landing in Boston during the 1800s.  I also did many, many pages of the England 1871 Census.  It really is a fun thing to read the documents and enter names and ages of people who lived so long ago.  My mind goes crazy thinking about all of the Irish who landed in Boston expecting a new and wonderful life, hoping that many of them actually did find that rather than the hate and scorn that so many Irish were greeted with.  I also love learning about all of the interesting careers that people in England had in the 1870s.  Things such as: cordwainer, carter, brass polisher, pen maker, candlemaker, etc. I love picturing these little villages where tradespeople of all kinds worked together trying to survive.  My sister got me hooked on indexing.  She sticks to the typed records because the handwritten ones make her crazy, but I LOVE reading the old cursive.  It's like a puzzle trying to figure out some of the names and places, but for some reason my brain can almost aways pick out what the writer intended to say.  Maybe it comes from being a student in the days before computers were around, or from being a teacher from the same era that makes it easy for my brain to read the cursive.  I tried my hand at some Venezuelan birth certificates from the 1800's as well.  It was fun to add the challenge of reading Spanish AND cursive at the same time.  But then I went back to the ship manifests.

To get to Utah, we drove 2 cars, with 4 drivers, so that was pretty great.  Lots of space and lots of help driving.  The way there we drove through a snow storm in the Blue Mountains, and that was pretty stressful because it was very dark and impossible to see where the road was curving.  But we made it to Ontario for the night.  I ran over the Snake River to Idaho in the morning, which was a fun thing to do, right?

In Salt Lake City we had fun with my family and also loved meeting up with some old friends.  The weather was so incredibly nice while we were there that the kids came home a bit sunburned.  We spent a day at BYU and went to a volleyball game, a day at the new Utah Museum of Natural History where Abram took this picture of me admiring their incredible weather station.  Also spent a day downtown at temple square and the new City Creek shopping center, went skating at the Olympic Oval, swimming at the community rec center, visited great grandparents, and just had a lot of fun.  The kids loved being with their cousins.  We did not make it bowling or to Hires for my Big H fix, and so next time we go those will be on the top of my list.

We drove home in one long day, which was a fun adventure.  I love the mountains of Salt Lake City, but every time I drive back home from being in Utah I am struck by the green beauty of the Gorge.  And the waterfalls were all very powerful on Sunday because Oregon had so much rain during the week we were gone.  It was a very beautiful drive.  When we got home and I walked into the house and saw the beautiful river out the back and the waterfall out the kitchen window I remembered that I really do live in the most beautiful place.