Old pictures

Well I was looking for a picture tonight and I found these. Didn't find the one I was looking for, but I suppose that's what happens when you keep most of your pictures in a box. I'm trying to learn how to scrapbook, but who wants a scrapbook with 150 pictures of Disneyland? OK I have a few other pictures but most of these days my pictures are digital. I just don't know if I should feel guilty or not. Anyway, the baby is me, playing with coins from my parents' piggy bank. I totally remember that plastic piggy bank and I LOVED that thing. I still love coins. They are cool. The other picture is about 15 years old of me and my sisters. I am the one in the peach colored sweater. The sad thing is, I STILL HAVE THAT SWEATER. How embarrassing. I need to give more stuff to thrift stores.

Family Reunion

Oooo, look! 2 posts in one week! I'm trying to start a better trend here, especially since I want any potential birth mothers to feel comfortable contacting us.

We had a great family reunion for my Dad's side of the family at the beginning of July. We went to our resort club in Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri and we had a BLAST. There were over 60 of us there at the peak time, and we had cooking contests and recorded family memories and went hiking and swimming and to the lake and built sandcastles and all sorts of fun stuff. Mostly I think it was great to see everyone that I hardly get to see, cousins and their kids and all of my aunts and uncles. They are such smart, kind, interesting people. I just love them. Here are a couple of pictures of us playing games and the view from the deck of our condo.

Adoption

We are currently in Salt Lake attending a conference for Families Supporting Adoption. It has been quite inspirational to me. So I'm going to use this opportunity to reach out to all of you (ok, like all 4 of you or so) to help us with our adoption process. The best way to find resources is to network, so that's what I'm trying to do.

So, first, if you know a young lady (or older lady, I don't care) who is pregnant and single and doesn't know what to do, please send her to this site . It's a great, unbiased source of help and counseling to help her through this difficult time. If she is interested, she can check out our profile by clicking on 'Search Adoption Profiles' on the left and putting JakeAndDyany (no spaces and it's case sensitive) in the adoptive profile name and clicking 'view profile'. The more you can get the word out about this site, the more it could help us. If she wants to contact us directly, she can send us an e-mail at munsonadoption(at)cableone.net

The other thing is something that is hard to ask. Adoption is really expensive. We have been saving for years, but we still only have a couple of thousand saved up and we need thousands more. If any of my friends and family are interested in helping us out financially with this project, please send us an e-mail to the above mentioned address.

Thanks for your time and attention and we hope to hear from you soon!

Interesting few months ahead

Well, at least they are interesting for me.

I get to start out by having a hysterectomy on valiumtimes day. Because nothing says 'I love you' like having your reproductive organs removed.

Then I get a month or two off. Then my brother gets married in Hawaii in June. Then we have a family reunion in Missouri the first week of July. Then my sister gets married in Utah the third week of July. Hooray, but man! So much going on! Everybody say YAY for weddings!

Scooting along

My super cute nephew Ammon at the Mill City Museum in Minnesota

My Super Cool Aunt

OK, sometimes I just have to brag. I have some pretty darned cool relatives. Does it count as bragging when you know that you yourself ain't worth much, but you're just pleased as punch to have relatives as cool as this? I hope that link holds out for a while, because that's just so ding-dang cool. My aunt is the coolest school librarian EVAR!!! Though how much that honors her to shout that in grammatically incorrect net-speak, I don't know. ;)

cousins

I have decided that my family is big. I have over 60 first cousins. On just my Mom's side. That is with no divorces and no 2nd marriages so no step-cousins or half-cousins or anything else to make it confusing. If you want to get confusing, my Grandma on that side remarried after my Grandpa died, and I could add in a couple dozen step cousins but I don't know any of them so I ain't countin' 'em! On my Dad's side, it's a little more tame...I think I only have 16 cousins on that side (again, no divorces or things like that). So my first question to you is: can you top 76 first cousins without counting any step cousins? My second question is: how weird is it that there are no divorces out of 13 aunts and uncles and only 1 divorce out of 76 first cousins? WEIRD I tell you!

And people wonder why I can't keep all their dang names straight. grumble mumble......

Genealogy, I am doing it

And as proof, I submit this . If you have trouble reading it, it's probably because I just uploaded the files and haven't cleaned it up yet, or that the background image is too dark (in which case, highlight the text and you can read it better).
Genealogy is addictive and frustrating. I have about 60,000 names in my file, which I have received from various relatives and linked up, but only about 9,000 names in the file I have uploaded. Why, you ask? Well as near as I can figure, most of the names in my file are just...there. Sitting. Not connected to my actual ancestral line. Don't ask me why. I have spent the last few months trying to clean up my file, but the best I've gotten done is merging a few hundred duplicates and updating some ordinance information so far. So if you want to know where I found the information on so-and-so, I'll tell you what I tell everyone else that e-mails me: I don't know. I haven't gotten to the verification stage yet, and none of my relatives have been kind enough to include source data on what they have given me.
Otherwise, if you have information on any of the names I just uploaded, PLEASE post a comment on it! I would love to get some verification information on any of this! Thanks!

Fambly reunion

Note who looks happy in this photo.

This is my nephew Isaac flying a kite.

We played games till the wee hours of the morning....

My niece Allison is such a great tea hostess!

3 kites! Can you see them all?

Another game. Please note, we didn't pose. These are actual photos of how my family really acts.



We had a family reunion in Oklahoma for the holidays. It was a lot of fun, though my family is a little...ahem....WEIRD.




This is my nephew Ammon. I have decided that he is one of the cutest babies EVAR. He is being held by my sister Brittany.