My dining room is so close to completion, it is usable. How nice to eat at the table--I am not and have never been a lap eater--I always spill. I learned something. When you are putting up molding, chair rail etc. and you need to use multiple pieces on a single wall, rather than trying to join two straight cuts, you do 45 degree angle cuts. I learned that after completing it all. I still have the plate rail to go on the long wall, so I think I will still have a chance to use this info. I must've missed this lesson on HGTV, so maybe I don't watch too much after all!

Family history is fun for the whole family. One thing we did when my children were young, was to go to a cemetary in IN. My Grandpa had never known his grandparents first names, refferring to them as Grandfather Sipe and Grandmother Slessman (her maiden name,) He wanted to know. Years after his death, in fact, in the last couple months before we were to move away from Indiana, I decided that my family was going cemetary hunting after church one Sunday. Now, Lura remembers the story a little differently, and she is probably more accurate, but I'll tell it the way I understood at the time.

We got down to Columbia City, discovering it was less than 45 minutes from Elkhart Co. (This was my third time to live 2 yrs in Elkhart Co, and my Uncle & family had also done so for many years--but no one had eve made this trip). I gave the kids each a piece of paper with the names Sipe, Slessman, and Slesman on it. "Look for these names," were the instructions. After awhile I heard Vinnie call out, "Found 'em!" He had leapfrogged over tombstones until he came face to face with (Uncle) Henry Sipe, and next to him were his parents: Adam and Margaret Slessman Sipe. How thrilling! We continued and found others as well. A couple weeks later, I took Erica (just a toddler) with me and went to the courthouse and found many more family members. To this day, Vinnie has a respect and sneaky affinity for genealogical work. I think that the girls saw it as finding real people for the first time as well.

We moved s few times after that, until we were in south Arkansas. There we had the opportunity to visit Vicksburg Battlefield in Mississippi. There are monuments to the troops everywhere. Illinois has a particularly large one listing the names of all those that faught at Vicksburg.(Civil War) Because Uncle Henry's tombstone had given his military service--including that he served in an Illinois Company, Sariah said, "let's see if we can find Uncle Henry." I thought the task impossible as I looked at the hundreds of names in the building. It was only a minute or two before she found him, however. Sometimes our family members really want to be found. They know us and want us to know them. I wish I could say that I have been as diligent in getting ordinances done , but I have been waaay too slow. No more excuses. I'm trying to rectify that now.

I only wish that all the time Grandpa spent in Elkhart County visiting from Chicago, someone would have taken him to the cemetary--just once, and he could have known his grandparents first names! I know all my grandparents first names...and their parents' names as well!