BTW

Oh, there is a teenager in the house! Scary right?

I know you’re probably gonna ask if that makes me feel old. My response would be just like Meta World Peace… my three point shot has left me, my defensive skills are a mere shadow of what they used to be, I can’t move that quickly laterally anymore, and I’m only good for 1 or 2 plays every couple of days, but does having a teenager make me feel old?

My answer would have to be no, because despite all of that stuff before being true, at least I don’t have a grandchild that’s a teenager!

Happy Birthday Nick!

3 Little Bears

So, way back when Melissa got married, I recorded the tape with her rendition of “The 3 Little Bears” onto the computer, and I had it on my flash drive so I could give it to people, and then time happened and I never did. But now, by somewhat-popular demand, here it is!

The first track is Jere, Liss and Justin singing primary songs, including Justin saying all the family’s names:
Primary Songs

And the second is the 3 Little Bears:
3 Little Bears

I had to compress them both in order to fit them on the site, but if anyone wants me to e-mail them the whole 10.3MB file I can. Also, I just recorded it off of a tape Mom has, but it wasn’t the original tape. So if anyone has a better-quality version, let us all know.

Mother’s Day Critters

I know, a week late with the post. I meant to put this up last week but, you know, Mother’s Day and all.

As I was mowing the lawn and trimming the day before Mother’s Day, I came across a couple of little baby animals all around our deck. The first was a tiny burrow with 4 baby rabbits in it. I was lucky none of them got caught in the mower. I only saw 3 at first, they all took off running in opposite directions. I finally rounded 2 of them up and got them back. One escaped to the forest behind our house. Then, when I started up the mower again a fourth one I never even saw went bounding away. So I rounded that one up and put it with it’s siblings.

Later, I think it was Becky that spotted the bird’s nest in our deck, only a few feet from the rabbits. If you look closely in the last picture you can see 2 little picks sticking out the side. We think there were 4 baby birds total.

And as evening set in, the rabbit parents returned, and the baby that escaped into the woods was with them.

Musicians unite! (Hey, it could happen.)

So everybody dust off your band skills. (Except Ti, who for some reason was exempt from the band mandate. What’s up with that Ti? So what if you sang. So did Melissa. And piano? Please! Exactly how many piano concerts/recitals did you have? FAVORITE BABY! FAVORITE BABY!) Anyway, I digress.

Some time ago I sent Laurie this link, thinking how fun it would be to do something like this in FHE someday. With our fourth on the way, we have just the right number. Then I saw this and set my sights higher. But with that number of people, it’ll never happen until our kids have kids and we did it at a family reunion.

Then I thought, hey I come from a family that could play circles around those VonTrapp amateurs! (And Ti, you could play piano, since Melissa has other options and Mom has an accordian.) Does this NOT look like a ton of fun to anyone out there?

We’d probably have to get kids and spouses involved too, if they’re up for it. Nick could wail on that violin solo, eh? We could do classics, spirituals, or whatever. (I’m telling you, if you don’t click on each link and watch the whole thing you’re missing out!) Billy’s got dibs on the ‘bone, but due to other needs elsewhere, there can only be one trumpeteer (kind of like Highlander), so you guys will have to figure it out.

So who wants what?

Depressed Census

So when they released the 1940 census recently, I was interested in finding Dad’s parent’s info and Mom’s grandparent’s as well, and comparing it to the 1930 census. I had a harder time finding Mom’s side of things, since the Indian census and the National census didn’t always coincide as well as one would think. Anyways, comparing the two, it really is see how blessed the Freemans were in terms of getting through the depression. Each census page with the info is shown below, you’ll probably have to enlarge them to clearly see the questions that head each column.