My Travels up North

For my first tid bit of info this is a picture of a Monkey Puzzle Tree. This tree is along the Seattle shoreline and many tourists were taking pictures of it as it's so peculiar looking. While staying at my son's place, in Seattle, Wa, I was able to convenience him to go next door (in the rain) and smack down a big brown seed pod off the tree. In doing so a small limb came off. Much to my surprise it looked like it was from the aloe family but was it hard and had sharp ends! The seed pods look like baby shark pods. I plan to plant these seeds in early spring. The tree is about 70 feet tall and more than 30 years old so the seed pods should be viable.





And the highlight of my trip is my grand daughter, Eva ! She is a sweetie...just my unbiased opinion.













The Seattle skyline just up the road from my son's place. There's a seal in the foreground.

Me and Eva. You can see the Space Needle to the left in the back ground. When all the buildings and Space Needle are lit with Christmas lights it is an amazing view. I usually find city views not my cup of tea.




This little humming bird in the tree was here all though out the day. He looked so lonely and was there even when it started to snow! In the back ground are the Cascade Mountains but only the first day of my visit did I actually see them, even in this picture they are hidden by clouds.

Snowy North Idaho

This is the barn across the road from our place in Idaho. It's much more scenic than this picture. I should have taken a picture yesterday when the sun was shining, oh well.

I've been here since Wednesday and today is the first real snow I've seen. I just hope it lets up tomorrow so I can fly to Seattle to see my grand daughter.

I'll take some more tomorrow and post them when I get chance.

Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and New Year!

McKay's Christmas Fashion Show

This is our Gordon Setter, McKay. Again, she tolerates me putting on Christmas head gear. At fourteen years old she's in great shape! She just came in from a morning walk in the snow. I think I'll be getting her snow booties....

Back to Blogging and Genealogy

Since I'm off this week I though I'd dig my heels in and work on my genealogy brick walls. That meant putting in another phone call to a distant cousin who has, of late, been my best source for family information. After getting the scoop on the Sicilian clans from back east we started in on the families that came over, on the boats, in the early 1900's to San Francisco. Perusing the ancestry.com files for eight hours I came up with six people who all went to my great grandmothers home address during that time. And what does that mean? Well, probably that I'm related to most of them, ah, you see back in the old days, mostly the 1800's, Sicilians married first cousins so....back three or four generations I have double cousins, aunts and uncles. I did have one set of cousins that married from San Francisco even though the families frowned upon it from what I was told.

The communes in Sicily were small and villagers, afraid of outsiders, inter married. No, no one so far has any dreaded deformities or diseases. In fact, most of my family live into their 90's. I have a great aunt who lived to 100. My family, on my Dads maternal side, have blue eyes and blond hair, guessing only from the influence of the Normans around 1061. Where as I have brown hair and brown eyes, like my dad, this may be from some Phoenician influence around 700 BC. These are all wild guesses as I still have to get my Dad to test his DNA, he's agreed but the cost is about 600.00 for testing the mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome. It will just have to wait till after Christmas. From what I've read it seems most people in Sicily do not judge anyone for their dark curly hair or their blue eyes due to the diversity on the island, this stemming from the invasions of many societies.

Now I do realize that being half Portuguese and the fact that my Mother's family came from the Azores, they had the same influence of invasion in the islands history. She has green eyes and dark curly hair as does my sister. In fact, my sister has enough hair for three people. I have skinny hair, straight, thin and does not hold a curl unless I use hairspray with super extra hold, of course after ratting it all up and combing it over so I don't look like Amy Winehouse.

Getting off that subject, I just received a call from my oldest boy back east. That really made my day, you see I was able to talk to all my boys today and that is what makes me happy. The little things in life are the best!