Positivity Project

Power of Positivity

During this time of the unknown and the scary, an opportunity has presented itself for us to come together. Distance is irrelevant. As a matter of fact, social distancing is a MUST. But – that doesn’t mean we can’t come together and pass along positivity and help each other thru.

I will use my blog to post positive things. Things are defined as videos, pictures, craft ideas, recipes, anecdotal stories. Anything that doesn’t focus on the negative of our healthcare scare, economy, and politics.

Would love for everyone to get involved and share how they are getting thru. How are they staying close to family and friends, how are they getting thru the day and keeping busy? Share fun stories from now or when you were younger.

You can share your positivity in the comments or send me a direct message and you can send me a blog post. Let's do this together!

Let’s start with Camping Brownies. What? What are camping brownies?

So glad you asked.

Camping Brownies are the best brownies! It's a recipe my grandmother, Maxine (AKA Mad Max) has made since I was a kid. My grandmother is 95 years young and the heart of our family. Not to mention a terrific cook and baker.

I share this recipe for you all to try as part of our Positivity Project.

Why are they called camping brownies? Good question. Because my grandma used to bake them for our camping trips. Camping with my grandparents used to be a summertime activity us kids loved. And the brownies were one of the many highlights.
Can you say YUMMY!!!!

Camping Brownie Recipe:

·         4 eggs
·         1 cup flour
·         1 cup sugar
·         1 stick butter
·         16 oz. Hershey’s chocolate syrup
·         ¼ tsp. salt

Instructions:

·         Melt butter, beat eggs and mix together.
·         Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Camping Brownie Topping:

·         1 1/3 cup sugar
·         6 tablespoons butter
·         6 tablespoons or 1/3 cup milk

Instructions:
·         Boil all the above ingredients for 30 seconds – stirring. Take off heat.
·         Add ½ cup chocolate chips.
·         Beat until it will spread on cooled brownies.

We made these for my grandmother's 95th birthday and they are as good now as they were then.

Enjoy!! And feel free to share a childhood or family recipe of one of your favorite treats as a kid.

Closing out 2018

As another year ends, I thought it would be fun to reflect on the little moments that made this year spectacular. You know, take some time to remember the happy or best events that shaped this year. To express gratitude, which as you know can actually make you happier.

Try it. Take 30 minutes or more and think of the times that put a smile on your face this year. The times that gave you joy. Try for 5 moments and believe it or not, I bet you even more will start popping into your head.

Write them down. Share here or share with a friend or a loved one over a beer or your favorite hot chocolate, or pizza. See what they come up with.

Here is my list. Believe me there are more, but I had to stop. Hope it works for you and it makes you smile and feel good about the close of 2018.

Grandma at rehab.

Some of my best moments this year revolved around my beautiful, strong, 94-year young grandmother. My grandmother got sick this year and was in the hospital for several weeks. Well, if you knew Maxine (AKA Mad Max as my father likes to refer to her), you’d know she is one tough cookie. She survived the incident, thank goodness and I have pictures of her smiling to prove it.

Grandma with my hat she made.

 

 

 

Grandma made some of the crocheted hats we donated to the homeless Veterans this year. She even made a hat for me. When I got bronchitis in late October grandma called me to check on my health and to tell me I should go stay with her, so she could take care of me. Such wonderful love and spirit this woman, the heart of our family has to give.

The quilt my mom made.

My mother, who battles cancer every day, the daughter of the grandmother I just mentioned is a fighter and the craftiest person I know. She may not do as much as she used to, but when she does, whatever she makes is beautiful. Mom made the cards for our homeless Veterans backpacks. My Christmas gift this year was a quilt made by my mom, Mary. I adore anything handmade/homemade and she knows that what she makes will be treasured.

Dad and I doing a 5K together.

Dad, AKA Pops, is the smartest person I know with the most common sense and the biggest heart. He takes care of everyone in this family, no matter how close or how far. But we all worried when he had to go in for a hip replacement earlier this year. He survived it and he was right back to playing golf the same day the doctor gave him the all clear. Not kidding. He booked the tee time before he went for his last follow up visit. He was not going to be stopped. I get my outdoors and activity mode from my father, Keith. Along with my tenacity.

My nephew and me.

I had a terrific time when my youngest nephew, Brandon came to visit and share his 20^th birthday with me. I mean, seriously, how many aunts are lucky enough to have a niece or nephew want to spend a long weekend with them? Me! I enjoyed every minute and I hope Brandon brings his contagious smile, blue eyes, red hair, and his amazing personality back to visit again SOON.

Even though I am so far away from all of my family I hope they know how much joy they bring into my life.

Tough Ruck 2018

This year I had some huge accomplishments in my running/walking. I did my first marathon ruck this year. Twenty-six point two miles with a 22-pound backpack. Talk about tough, but the reward was time spent talking with many active military, retired military, and first responders. Oh, and the embarrassing part of tripping over the finish line. THAT, I will never forget. And the hot fudge sundae as a reward for my efforts. I had so much fun and supported such a fantastic cause - Military Friends Foundation that I am doing it again this year. If you’d like to help me support the Military Friends Foundation, which helps military and first responder families you can donate here: https://www.crowdrise.com/o/en/campaign/tough-ruck-for-the-fallen-2019



Me and my support crew.

What brought me to happy tears this year was FINALLY reaching 100 miles in an ultra-event. Actually, it was 101 miles of cold, rain, heat, sweat, and blisters (my nemesis). What made it all the sweeter was not the buckle I received (although that was very cool!) it was having my good friend Renee there to share it with me. She not only walked with me off and on, but she was my support crew. She pulled me out of my funk when I hit bottom, went and got us real food when we could eat no more junk, and suffered through sleeping in the back of my SUV for two nights. How many friends do you know would do that? Heck, I can’t get most my friends to even go to a run and see what I love about ultras. If they only knew what they were missing…

Renee bucket list.

This year Renee and I also did a run from her bucket list – the Marine Corps Marathon. That is by far the best marathon and I know I enjoyed running it with a good friend, the sightseeing we did before and after the event, and just the general good time. Of course getting that medal put over my head by a Marine - there’s a lot of happy tears involved in running, but none more than when you do it with a friend. 😊



Operation Stuffit with family

What brings me much joy and happiness is giving back. This year I saved so I could spend every weekend gathering backpacks and supplies for our local homeless Veterans. I wish this was something that did not need to be done, but it is an honor and a privilege and a way for me to say thank you to the men and women who do so much for us. The culmination of this effort happened on a Saturday evening where I spent four hours with my neighbors and friends who are more like family to me; listening to Christmas music and stuffing the backpacks with care and love in what I refer to as Operation Stuffit. Thank you, Kenny, Donna, Jay, and Lynn not only for your help, but for your friendship and unwavering support.

Speaking of good friends. WOW! Right before Christmas I got to speak with a couple of longtime friends. I’m talking people I have known and loved since high school. I literally sat in my car for 90 minutes talking with Maurine and Duane who I haven’t spoken by phone or seen in years. Amazing how time slips away even after all these years and you realize how much you still have to talk about and how much these people meant to you back then and how much they helped shape who you are today.

I could go on. Like all the text messages my aunt Sheri and sister, Jeanine share weekly. Drives my brother in law nuts when the phone dings repeatedly when we are on a roll, but the three of us have a good time keeping in touch and making sure we know what is happening in our lives. Sharing with each other. Sharing is caring, right?!

See! I told you once you started you would see there were many happy moments, little slices of heaven that occurred throughout the year. Times and events that that make you smile and make you grateful.

I hope you take the time to recognize just a few and take that warm feeling into the new year.

 

Is there such a thing as a work family?

Yesterday was a Monday. Honestly, who likes a Monday? Seriously.

The day starts by getting up before 4 AM just so I can be in my car and on the road to work before the crack of dawn so I can beat the horrific traffic. The bonus is that when I get to work there are very few people there so I can actually get some work done before the wave of noise and lower productivity sets in.

The engineers who work for me, however, are the delight of my day. These guys are wicked smart, creative, and funny. They are the reason that work is fun and the reason I put up with the ridiculous bureaucracy in the organization.

What I love about these people is that while we are working our tails off to deliver good software we laugh. Someone will share a Dilbert cartoon or a web link from some other software coding disaster. Or we share personal stories like how they met their girlfriend/wife or the latest family vacation. One guy who works with me longer than anyone shares recipes, talks about his beer making, his golf struggles.

When someone calls out due to a cold or this nasty flu we cover for each other. Everyone steps in to make sure nothing gets forgotten and the sickie doesn't come back with a full plate to sift through, but can come back and hit the ground running.

It's all terrific and it's what makes us a work family. Yes. That is the perfect description. We are a family who comes together for 8 to 10 hours a day and then goes home to our home life.

I am grateful for these wonderful and talented people for making my work family so diverse, interesting, fun, and extremely productive. Because yes, they do amazing work and make me smile.

Do you have a work family?

Researching the family history. . .is it fact or fiction fodder?

As a writer if you want to write a realistic story (even if it is fiction) you do your research. You research clothing of the 18th century. You investigate military black sites when writing about the CIA and human intelligence. Writing a story on baseball? Then you’ll probably find yourself at a baseball game, maybe even trying to sneak into the dugout to sit on the bench with one of the hotties hugging wood.

I recently began doing research on my own family’s history. Let me tell you…there are a whole lot of story ideas that can come from your own family closets. Heck, the freaky names alone will give you a good laugh. I have an Antipas Gilman in my family tree. Antipas? Is that short for antipasta? What about Minnie Moon Markusen? Seriously! Does that not sound like a woman who would sit across the room and spit into a spitoon?

My great-grandparents on my father’s side helped build the town of Anthon, Iowa and even had a run-in with Frank and Jesse James. How cool is that?

OH! Anthon, Iowa is also the town where the tallest man is buried at 9 feet 2 inches. What a great tidbit you could throw into a story or tell your children one day.

So how do you do this family research?

In the case of family history, and that is the focus of this little blog post, it is a lot of talking with family members and internet research.

Whatever you do, don’t believe everything your family states unless they have it in writing. That sounds so terrible, but it is true. For the longest time, I understood my great-grandfather on my mother’s side to be Tom Gillman. Well, when my grandmother did a little digging into paperwork, we discovered that his full name is Joseph John Thomas Gillman.

Back to family history exploration. First, let’s start with where can you create your family tree as you go along?

There is a website called http://www.geni.com that is absolutely free. Yes, you can pay for the professional version but it is not necessary if all you want to do is input names, dates, relationships, images of the relative. One nice feature of this site is that you can share it with your relatives so they can add other relatives and information to help your project along. You can, of course, purchase family tree software like Family Tree Maker.

Now for the actual research. Many people have asked me which sites I joined or subscribed to, which equates to fees. Are you kidding me? No, you can do this without a cost.

There are websites such as http://www.familysearch.org that allow you to put in a name and possible dates of marriage or birth, the location of where they may have lived, who their spouse or parents were and then hit search and check the results. If other people have been doing research on the same line you will sometimes find that the family and/or pedigree information is available.

Note: Be cautious of giving too much detail because you could be absolutely wrong. For example, my great-grandfather’s last name has always been spelled Gillman, but in fact the name has been modified or misinterpreted down the line from what it was when the family came from England. In the states it started as Gilman. In England it was spelled Gylman or something like that. Use soundex when possible.

Remember I said don’t believe it until you see it in black and white? Well, perfect example is a birth date or place. Be open to the fact that the year could be plus or minus a couple of years.

Other sites you can use for researching family history. http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ Search the surnames, the trees, the archive lists, the forums, message boards. None of those require you to pay a fee to do your investigation.

What you will find is a string of other people asking the same questions as you about the same people and who may have actually found the answers. If you’re real lucky, as I was, you may actually find someone who has half of a family branch already documented. If that happens, be sure to send them off an email and thank them for their effort. I sent Fred Cohoon an email thanking him for identifying so many of my relatives on that branch and offered to send him more information from my family that he did not have documented at the time. What a great way to meet long lost and/or unknown relatives.

http://www.ancestry.com/ is great for searching names and getting an idea of when someone may have been born or died, and where if you are unsure, and even possibly tell you the name of a parent or spouse. To go any further will cost you a fee. I have not gotten that desperate yet.

A truly wonderful site that will lead to other sites is http://www.usgenweb.org. The USGenWeb Project is a group of volunteers working together to provide Internet websites for genealogical research in every county and every state of the United States. Part of my family is from Iowa so I went to http://iagenweb.org/. USGenWeb is non-commercial and fully committed to free access for everyone. There is even a WorldGen project so you can search across the globe. http://www.worldgenweb.org/.

USGenWeb is a where I found some very good information about relatives because I could search by state. I could search obituaries, state census data, old newspapers like http://iowaoldpress.com/. Talk about great fodder for fantastic fiction!

Don’t forget that these long since deceased family relations have to have been buried somewhere. Yeah, a tad morbid I know, but. . .it’s a starting point to find names and dates and another point for searches. Try http://www.findagrave.com/ to search for a grave. Most states have a grave site for you to search such as http://iowagravestones.org/ and http://utahgravestones.org/.

http://www.genealogy.com/index_r.html is another site that you can do name searches on and has some great forums where you can once again follow other people’s efforts in tracking families. Link for forum searches is http://genforum.genealogy.com/.

I will tell you now that this kind of research is addictive. You will find yourself in front of your computer with 5 minutes to spare before you have to pick up the kids from school doing any number of search combinations to find that one name that has eluded you. Watch out! You may just forget the kid at the bus stop.

Ultimately, when you find out that your family branch came from Barbadoes and helped build a town in Iowa, or that a bunch of them sailed over on a ship from England to be early settlers and the family behind Gilmanton, NH then all sorts of ideas will start to run through your head. If nothing else, you will learn way too much about your family along with reading some very interesting stories of not so well known relatives.

Have fun and happy hunting!

Writing runs in the family

I've recently been doing some research into family genealogy and as part of that my parents have pulled out a few newspaper clippings, letters, etc. to help me find more information. Yesterday, as my father rummaged through papers, he found a poem he had written when I was 2 years old.

I hope it touches you as it touched me. I'm glad to know writing runs in the family.


D is for all the Devine joy that she has brought to us

Or the Devil in her eyes.

E is for all the Eternal happiness that we can only hope she can have

Or Every mischievous deed she can do.

N is for how Naïve all children are

Or how Nice her mother wants her to be.

I is for all the Intensity she puts into her playing

Or how Inviting she is to hold.

S is for how Shy we all want our little girls to be

Or how silly they really can be.

E is for Everything that little girls are to their fathers

Or Everything that my little girl, DENISE, is to me.

Happy birthday Codi!

Every now and again I write something about my family. Since today is my nephew Codi's birthday, I thought it appropriate to talk about him.

Codi AKA Codeman has always been a skinny kid and it's hard to believe he's grown up to be a teenager. He was so skinny I used to call him "no butt." His response to me whenever I said that was, "I not no butt." Then he would turn around and flash me his little no butt tushy. Isn't innocence wonderful?

At age three, we introduced Codi to the computer. We bought him a Tonka Truck game and a colorful, blue-red-yellow kid computer mouse. He took to the PC like a fish to water. He even decided that he preferred the "big person" mouse. After that, we invested in a boatload of computer games. Thank goodness there are some terrific educational software companies out there. Now the kid wants to learn to program games. Cool!

I believe it was that same winter that Codi took his first skiing lessons. Being a kid from Florida, he thought snow was very cool and whenever he visited he wanted to ski. Of course, when he found out that we snowboarded he wanted to do that instead of skiing. Fickle kid.

Codi has always had the most amazing memory. He remembers absolutely everything anyone has ever given him and cares for the fuzzy, quacking duck I gave him for Easter as if it were worth a million dollars instead of the 5 dollars it cost. Now, he still holds every gift as though it were a most valued possession, but the price of those gifts has gone higher than 5 dollars. For his birthday this year, I sent him an Xbox game. Not only did I send him a game, but I had to send my other nephews the same game so they can play across the internet with each other. Isn't family wonderful, not to mention expensive.

He loves spending time with his grandparents and strives to be like his grandpa. He enjoys shopping with grandma and nagging her to make him stuff like a quilt for his bed. He's crazy about doing "guy" things with grandpa. Codi and my dad do the "guy" things such as going to the driving range and hitting some golf balls, mowing yards, building things at Home Depot. Occasionally, the two will go off and take a day trip where there are "no girls allowed." Hm. Hope Codi isn't teaching my dad any bad things on those outings.

Codi is a wicked smart kid, but the poor guy has my personality when it comes to learning something new. If he doesn't get it the first time or right out of the gate, he gets frustrated. Hopefully he figures out that frustration leads to learning and that persistence is a wonderful tool to success.

Codeman - I hope you have a wonderful day and that your birthday celebration is filled with family, friends, and fun. And don't forget to call your Aunt Denise.

Love ya!

My mom got the book before me

HA! My mother ordered IT HAPPENS IN THREES off the Internet and received her copy before I received mine.

She called me Friday night from my dad's cell phone while he drove so she could tell me the news. She was so excited that she told my father to read the dedication to her while we spoke.

Uh hem! Dad was driving the car!! :-)

Anyway, they finally read the dedication (later)...which was to them. All these months and they never had a clue so it was a great feeling to know I choked up my own parents.

Yesterday, I spoke with my dad and he was telling me that when the guys arrived in the morning to work on replacing their kitchen tile my mother was right there showing off her daughter's book.

Don't you just love family!! I love mine.