Genealogy Access

If anyone else would like to be able to access the family tree directly, let me know and I'll set you up with access. We have tons of royals - but - there is a weak link. James Williams (1514-1575) is questionable. If that link doesn't hold up, we lose ALL royals! I'm trying to figure out how to confirm him. There is a lot of wrong information on the internet, as you can imagine.

But we'll always have John Alden.

Oh, and we have a Bridgett Williams (1670-1691)! Sadly, it appears she might have died during childbirth. Bummer. Sorry I brought it up...

Happy Birthday Ronnie!!!! (July 25th)

Kitchen Update

Thanks for your input, Bridget. I did exchange the tumbled marble for white subway tile. I also got pre-meshed trim. It's about 3" tall, and is made up of charcoal gray slate pieces and white glass pieces. Obviously I decided that adding a color would be too risky. The guys are coming next Wednesday to install the black granite, then I'm going to do the backsplash myself, since it's much simpler now. I'm pretty sure I can cut the subway tiles with a tile cutter and nipper, without requiring a water saw. I decided it would be much safer to bring color in with accessories.

I have a hall bathroom that has the original floral wallpaper. I KNOW! I tried stripping the wallpaper off, but it was a mess. So I ordered a thick solid bronze wallpaper to put over it. It came in yesterday, and I was surpirsed to discover that I had ordered paper that didn't come pre-pasted. Yikes. I've never worked with that type before. So I'm doing that this afternoon. I have one strip up, and so far so good. Anything will be better than that old wallpaper.

Kitchen Design Help

I know I have a lot of little designers in the family, so I'd like your thoughts...

My kitchen cabinets are off-white colored. I'm putting black ceramic tiles on the counter. I was going to put tumbled white marble 2" squ tiles for the backsplash. But since my kitchen is in the center of the house, there are no windows in it. So I'm thinking I need a backsplash that is reflective. I was thinking about maybe doing the backsplash in black granite with a 4" pattern of 1" glass mosaic tiles at about the 75% point. OR, white subway tiles with the glass tile pattern. Thoughts? I have mostly stainless appliances. The other main colors in my house are sand, dk brown and blues. I thought of adding a splash of burgundy in the glass trim, but that's kind of a risk. Please post your ideas.

Hello from the Ozarks!

Hey family...Its me, Andrea from the Ozarks...so apparently I'm not much of a blogger...sorry! But I'm going to do my best to do better. I am still in Branson workin at K-Kauai, we have about 4 more weeks left here, gee the summer has flown by! It was so fun to see the family a couple weeks ago when they were up here. If anyone else heads this direction make sure you come by and say hello! I'm loving the geneology reports, and thank you for the birthday wishes...keep posting I love hearing about the fun baseball games and such that are going on. I sure do love you guys and can't wait to come visit come August!

Back from Branson

We're back! It was wonderful and we all came home exhausted! We went to Silver Dollar City and saw a magic show and a veggies tales show. Then Wednesday we went shopping then that night went to the Dixie Stampede. It was amazing. Seriously, if any of you ever go to Branson make sure to get tickets for that. Then on Thursday the girls went to see the show SIX while the boys rode a Duck. Then that evening we all went to see the Haygoods. All were amazing shows and lots of fun!

Unfortunately, I did a horrible job of taking pictures. Kara has some on her camera so she'll have to post those. Here's the best one I got: Dad fixing lunch.

Genealogy Link

I'm going to put new ancestry stuff on this other blog, so as not to clutter things up too much here. Let me know if you'd like to be invited to the ancestry.com site so that you can peruse the whole tree yourself.

Is everyone back from Branson? Do we have pictures and stories?

John Alden - Mayflower Pilgrim

Yep - that's right. We came over on the Mayflower. Here is the lineage (the line is at the top of the page - starting with my name):

Sadly, the most exciting ties are through Dad's side of the family. Although I did find that one of Mom's great-great-great grandads was John Hunt - who founded Huntsville, Alabama.

I'm finding so much interesting stuff that it's overwhelming.

We're distant - DISTANT - cousins of the sitting Queen of England. And, to my horror, the sitting president of the US.

I'm going to try to figure out a way to post the detail where it's easily accessible to everyone. I had to subscribe to ancestry.com to get to it, but there's probably a free site I can use.

Happy Birthday Andrea!!!!

What fits on one page...

Click on picture to see larger version....

We're Royals!!!!

Well, on Dad's side anyway. I've traced the Williams back to 15th century England. We have a grandma with this pedigree:

Catherine of Valois (27 October 1401 – 3 January 1437) was the Queen consort of England from 1420 until 1422. She was the daughter of King Charles VI of France, wife of King Henry V of England, mother of King Henry VI of England, and through her second marriage, to Owen Tudor, the grandmother of King Henry VII of England. Catherine's older sister, Isabella of Valois, was Queen consort of England from 1396 – 1400, as the child bride of King Richard II of England.

Here is the best I can do to capture this lineage. If you look at the stream of names at the top, you'll see how it steps back. Catherine of Valois is the 6th down on the right side.

Genealogy Results

So I've been doodling around with genealogy. I did it a bit about 6 years ago. But last week I subscribed on ancestry.com, and holy cow... they have a ton of information these days. The most surprising things I've found so far:

1. On Dad's side of the family, we go back to the Baskerville's of England and the Richard Rich's of London. I'm wondering if "Richy Rich" was inspired by our ancestors? Once you get into the British data - it's very organized, and I've gotten one line back to before 1100.
2. We have a ton of names I didn't know about: Stockton, McNabb, Moore, Mitchell, Doak, Deveroux, Mayne, Grimsditch, Cranor, etc. etc. - too many to mention.
3. Funniest ancestor name so far: Prudence Fanny Goudelock - born in Virginia in 1742.
4. Number of people identified so far: 424
5. There are instances on both Mom and Dad's sides of the family where 1st cousins got married. ew.
6. So far I've traced ancestors back to Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales.

Rumor has it that we're descended from Lord Byron - but I haven't seen that come up yet.

What was I thinking...

I decided to replace the ugly white formica on my kitchen counters with granite. I have a HUGE kitchen, which is nice except when you're replacing the counters with granite. 85 sq ft of counter space. So... I decided to be practical and use granite tiles. I also decided I could do it myself with the help of Tim. Tim is my friend Cindy's husband who is retired. They live 3 blocks away, and Cindy is always traveling for her job, so I'm really doing Tim a favor by giving him a project, right?

I have white cabinetry, so I chose "absolute black" granite for the counters, and 2" tumbled white marble tiles for the backsplash.

So today was day 1, we pulled off all the formica and "custom" formica edging. Tim is doing the saw work with the backerboard. However, he's leaving for London on Wednesday, so it will be awhile before you see an "after" picture. (Unless I get antsy and hire someone in the meantime...)

Grandad loves baseball, can't you tell?

Mom and Dad came to Hunter's tournament when they played 4 games 1 day and 2 the next. As you can see.....Dad does not miss his nap. Temperature probably 95 +, but it doesn't bother his nap. Now Mom, she won't miss a thing!

More girls.....

Addie played t-ball for her first time. T-ball is kind of a waste of time. Now I know why Lance bumped Avery up to coach pitch. T-ballers don't take much real serious, I think it's kind of boring for them too. Oh well, Addie played and there is no tournament for t-ball so she is done.

Girls play too!

Avery also in tournament and lost their second game last night. The coach (Lance) was accused of touching his runner on third base so the umpire called her out. Coach says he did not touch her but the umpire said it looked like he did. Kind of a bad deal because they lost by 1 point. The umpires job is very tough and trying to be right but is definitely wrong sometimes, they do the best they can. I sure wouldn't want to be one. Anyway, Avery played coach pitch ball and seems to have fun and tries hard. Avery is a very fast runner. I tried to get a picture of her coming in to home and guess what??? I missed it!

Eat your Broccoli!

For the men in the family (especially Ted, Lyndon, Lance) - here is a great article on how to avoid prostate cancer - which afflicts every man in our family... eventually. I thought it was especially important to pass this on, since we didn't grow up eating broccoli.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25485197/

Baseball too

Hunter played for OK Kids this summer a traveling team. His tournament was Sat. and Sun. playing 4 games on Sat. and 1 on Sunday. They ended up coming in 2nd place which we thought was really good, they had some tough competition.

Gatlin and Jackson are playing Kids Inc. ball but on different teams. Tournament started yesterday with both boys winning so they will play each other tonight at 6:30.

After Gatlin's game Dad called and said that Tyler was pitching so Gatlin, Jackson and I went over and watched that game. Tyler's team won against the Southwest Shockers an Altus team.

Tyler plays tonight in Woodward and Gatlin and Jackson play against each other so guess what??? WE ARE CLOSED TONIGHT!!!! I love baseball!

Sorry, Vicki, this isn't a pet story

Caleb's baseball team, which RC coaches, won the league championship last night 7 - 5!!

Josh's team was beat out of the playoffs last night, but he also got a trophy so he was very happy.

You can read the details on my blog.

Bridget