Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Genius Daughter # 1
Last night GG wanted a treat, so she reached into the "cracker" drawer and grabbed a fruit roll up. This is the first time she has had a fruit roll up and I explained to her as I unwrapped it, what it was. I told her that it is crushed fruit rolled up into a tube with plastic on the outside, and she shouldn't eat the plastic.
GG said thanks, unwrapped it and started licking it. A few minutes later, GG was rumaging through the cupboards and emerged with a rolling pin. I didn't think much of it, as I was concentrating on eating diner. A few minutes later I noticed GG standing at the coffee table attempting to roll out her chewed up fruit roll up. There was a large sticky blue pile on the table and GG was using the rolling pin to remake her fruit roll up. I have know idea how she thought that up....
Last night GG wanted a treat, so she reached into the "cracker" drawer and grabbed a fruit roll up. This is the first time she has had a fruit roll up and I explained to her as I unwrapped it, what it was. I told her that it is crushed fruit rolled up into a tube with plastic on the outside, and she shouldn't eat the plastic.
GG said thanks, unwrapped it and started licking it. A few minutes later, GG was rumaging through the cupboards and emerged with a rolling pin. I didn't think much of it, as I was concentrating on eating diner. A few minutes later I noticed GG standing at the coffee table attempting to roll out her chewed up fruit roll up. There was a large sticky blue pile on the table and GG was using the rolling pin to remake her fruit roll up. I have know idea how she thought that up....
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Friday, November 30, 2007
Monday, October 15, 2007
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Monday, August 20, 2007
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Some of my ancestors...
Maine is quite literally littered with graveyards. Every few miles you come along a new graveyard. The interesting thing is that many of these graveyard seem to be placed on hills. Maybe so they wouldn't take up usable farm land or something. We stopped at the East Bethel Cemetary to look at a few of my relatives gravestones.
Here is my Grandfather William Straw Hastings. Straw was not his given middle name. I will update the story of why he took the middle name Straw in my next post. He and a good friend of his drown in a boating accident when my dad was nine.
My Grandmother, Ruth Linnie Cole Hastings. Raised 3 children by herself by working as a teacher. Completed her college degree late in life. I remember very little about her except that she sewed us boys a ton of clothes, and when she died, we inherited her Ford Grenada.
My Great Grandfather, George Kimball Hastings. He committed suicide a few months after my Grandfather died. He was depressed about the death of his son, had some health problems, and a great hatred for hospitals due to his feelings that hospitals led to his wife's death. He was a big time hunter and worked with his uncle Gideon to trap capture wild animals. A deer George caught was sold to Central Park in 1890.
My Great Grandmother, May L Hastings. To put her two sons through college, May went into the egg producing business.
My Uncle...He was a Marine, and the quintessential outdoors guy. Worked in the woods of New Hampshire all of his life and specialized in underwater rescue / recovery.
And finally, my dad and step mom. It is a little weird to stand next to your father looking down on his grave stone. He made sure to tell us that he doesn't want to be buried there...he wants to be cremated and scattered over Montana. The stone is for letting people know that he exited.
My next post will be on the 3 Hastings houses in Bethel. One of them is a museum, one a private residence (but maintained as a museum)and the third is a bed and breakfast complete with an Italian restaurant and martini bar.
Maine is quite literally littered with graveyards. Every few miles you come along a new graveyard. The interesting thing is that many of these graveyard seem to be placed on hills. Maybe so they wouldn't take up usable farm land or something. We stopped at the East Bethel Cemetary to look at a few of my relatives gravestones.
Here is my Grandfather William Straw Hastings. Straw was not his given middle name. I will update the story of why he took the middle name Straw in my next post. He and a good friend of his drown in a boating accident when my dad was nine.
My Grandmother, Ruth Linnie Cole Hastings. Raised 3 children by herself by working as a teacher. Completed her college degree late in life. I remember very little about her except that she sewed us boys a ton of clothes, and when she died, we inherited her Ford Grenada.
My Great Grandfather, George Kimball Hastings. He committed suicide a few months after my Grandfather died. He was depressed about the death of his son, had some health problems, and a great hatred for hospitals due to his feelings that hospitals led to his wife's death. He was a big time hunter and worked with his uncle Gideon to trap capture wild animals. A deer George caught was sold to Central Park in 1890.
My Great Grandmother, May L Hastings. To put her two sons through college, May went into the egg producing business.
My Uncle...He was a Marine, and the quintessential outdoors guy. Worked in the woods of New Hampshire all of his life and specialized in underwater rescue / recovery.
And finally, my dad and step mom. It is a little weird to stand next to your father looking down on his grave stone. He made sure to tell us that he doesn't want to be buried there...he wants to be cremated and scattered over Montana. The stone is for letting people know that he exited.
My next post will be on the 3 Hastings houses in Bethel. One of them is a museum, one a private residence (but maintained as a museum)and the third is a bed and breakfast complete with an Italian restaurant and martini bar.
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Hastings Farm.
I'm still up in the woods of Maine and have only a very sketchy Internet connection but here are a few pictures of my trip down Hastings Lane.
The Hastings Farm. It has been in the family since 1792. My Dad's cousin Sonny has a dairy operation set up, and raises corn and hay. In Minnesota, they have a bunch of "Century Farms", farms that have been in the same family for 100 years. This one has been in the same family for over 200 years.
Right below the Hastings Farm sign is a large granite boulder with a metal sign attached. Here is a picture.
The sign says,
Non Historical Marker. On this spot February 29, 1776 Absolutely Nothing Happened.
We were at the family farm to celebrate the birthday of my Dad's Aunt. She is 103 years old... and very alert. She made sure that we all went out to look at her cows.
Here is a picture of the house build in 1792. I have pictures of my great great grandfather and his family sitting right out front these very same doors.
In 1923, my Grandpa build his family a house across the driveway from this house. My Dad and his brother and sister were all born in this house. In the basement, my grandma set up a chicken operation and incubated chickens to sell the eggs and broilers. My dad said he always hated having to go down to work in the chicken coop in the basement. Here is a picture of the house:
Here was my grandparent's room, and the room my dad was born in.
It is a little strange to travel 3,000 miles across the country and stand in the exact room your father was born in 73 years ago. Anyway, I'll post more later. Tomorrow we are taking a train up the tallest mountain east of the Mississippi - Mount Washington. I've got a bunch of shots of the old gravestone of my ancestors, and some really cool pictures of some of my ancestors houses that are now museums, and in one case a martini bar...
I'm still up in the woods of Maine and have only a very sketchy Internet connection but here are a few pictures of my trip down Hastings Lane.
The Hastings Farm. It has been in the family since 1792. My Dad's cousin Sonny has a dairy operation set up, and raises corn and hay. In Minnesota, they have a bunch of "Century Farms", farms that have been in the same family for 100 years. This one has been in the same family for over 200 years.
Right below the Hastings Farm sign is a large granite boulder with a metal sign attached. Here is a picture.
The sign says,
Non Historical Marker. On this spot February 29, 1776 Absolutely Nothing Happened.
We were at the family farm to celebrate the birthday of my Dad's Aunt. She is 103 years old... and very alert. She made sure that we all went out to look at her cows.
Here is a picture of the house build in 1792. I have pictures of my great great grandfather and his family sitting right out front these very same doors.
In 1923, my Grandpa build his family a house across the driveway from this house. My Dad and his brother and sister were all born in this house. In the basement, my grandma set up a chicken operation and incubated chickens to sell the eggs and broilers. My dad said he always hated having to go down to work in the chicken coop in the basement. Here is a picture of the house:
Here was my grandparent's room, and the room my dad was born in.
It is a little strange to travel 3,000 miles across the country and stand in the exact room your father was born in 73 years ago. Anyway, I'll post more later. Tomorrow we are taking a train up the tallest mountain east of the Mississippi - Mount Washington. I've got a bunch of shots of the old gravestone of my ancestors, and some really cool pictures of some of my ancestors houses that are now museums, and in one case a martini bar...
Monday, July 30, 2007
Friday, July 27, 2007
GG's trip to the ER
The Hastings proclivity for facial scars takes another victim. My body is marred by any number of scars, from the "Big One" the six inch long, 1/2 inch wide scar down the back of my ankle to the strange backward "Y" Harry Potter like scar on my forehead. I have a "new" scar on the left side of my nose from striking my face on an open bathroom vanity drawer, and an old 2" long football scar on the back of my right arm. Last night, GG proved her Hastingsness by slicing her lip open.
We were planning on attending a "Sammamish City Nights" concert last night, and as I came home from work, everything was fine. GG was upstairs with Mama, and as she often does when I get home, she said "Dadda?" I said hi GG, then heard the double thud of an excited GG tumbling down the stairs.
GG immediately started crying, and as I went up the stairs to get her, she looked scared but fine. All of a sudden in a split second, there was blood everywhere. She was lying on her back on the middle portion of the stairs and blood was running from her mouth all over her face and into her eyes. I grabbed her, took her down to the kitchen, and began to wipe away the blood. Just my luck I happened to be wearing a crisp white dress shirt that was now soaked in blood.
After wiping away most of the blood, the injury didn't appear too bad. About a 1/2 inch gash on the right side of her lip. The gash was a gaping gash and was bleeding pretty good. I looked and it didn't go all the way through and her teeth were all present and accounted for. Naarah took a look, and after vetoing my trip to the ER when I cut my face open six months earlier, declared we need to go to the Emergency room.
By the time we packed up GG, she was in a pretty good mood and excited to go on an adventure with Momma and Dadda. At the emergency room, we waited in the lobby for about 2 hours and GG had a good time running around looking at the fish tanks, and pretty much having a great time. Naarah and I talked about just going home, but a nurse said that we really should get the gash sown up, so that she wouldn't be horribly scarred for life.
After seeing the doctor and being told that she would need stitches, we sat around in the ER room for another hour and tried to get GG to hold a topical anesthetic to her lip. The doctor said that if we could get her to numb up her lip, we wouldn't have to restrain her when she got stitches. - GG didn't really like to hold the anesthetic to her lip, so we went with plan #2 restrain a toddler.
Naarah left because she didn't want to see what was going to happen, as the male nurse came in with the restraints (1 pillow case and a few blankets.) The nurse told GG that he was going to make her a superman cape and proceeded to tuck GG's arms into a pillow case behind her body. After GG got her cape on, we laid her down, and stretched a blanket across her upper torso. The doctor came by and said, "you better restrain her legs too, you really don't want to be kicked in the head by a toddler..." So the nurse stretched a sheet across her legs.
As soon as the Doctor poked her lip with the syringe GG yelled out "All Done" and began to scream and thrash around. She continue to yell "All Done" and the Doctor said "I bet". GG is strong like bull, it took two grown men, the nurse and myself to restrain her. The nurse laid across her upper torso and I was responsible for laying across her legs. GG is super strong, and I started to sweat trying to keep her from kicking the crap out of all three of us.
It took about ten minutes for the Doctor to give GG 5 stitches and through the whole thing she kept crying and saying "All Done". When the stitching was over, we let GG get up and she was drenched in sweat. Her hair was sticking straight out and she looked like the mug shot of Nick Nolte after he was arrested for a 3 day bender. GG recovered pretty quickly and as we drove home 4 hours after she fell down the stairs, she spend the car ride home pointing out the moon to us.
The Hastings proclivity for facial scars takes another victim. My body is marred by any number of scars, from the "Big One" the six inch long, 1/2 inch wide scar down the back of my ankle to the strange backward "Y" Harry Potter like scar on my forehead. I have a "new" scar on the left side of my nose from striking my face on an open bathroom vanity drawer, and an old 2" long football scar on the back of my right arm. Last night, GG proved her Hastingsness by slicing her lip open.
We were planning on attending a "Sammamish City Nights" concert last night, and as I came home from work, everything was fine. GG was upstairs with Mama, and as she often does when I get home, she said "Dadda?" I said hi GG, then heard the double thud of an excited GG tumbling down the stairs.
GG immediately started crying, and as I went up the stairs to get her, she looked scared but fine. All of a sudden in a split second, there was blood everywhere. She was lying on her back on the middle portion of the stairs and blood was running from her mouth all over her face and into her eyes. I grabbed her, took her down to the kitchen, and began to wipe away the blood. Just my luck I happened to be wearing a crisp white dress shirt that was now soaked in blood.
After wiping away most of the blood, the injury didn't appear too bad. About a 1/2 inch gash on the right side of her lip. The gash was a gaping gash and was bleeding pretty good. I looked and it didn't go all the way through and her teeth were all present and accounted for. Naarah took a look, and after vetoing my trip to the ER when I cut my face open six months earlier, declared we need to go to the Emergency room.
By the time we packed up GG, she was in a pretty good mood and excited to go on an adventure with Momma and Dadda. At the emergency room, we waited in the lobby for about 2 hours and GG had a good time running around looking at the fish tanks, and pretty much having a great time. Naarah and I talked about just going home, but a nurse said that we really should get the gash sown up, so that she wouldn't be horribly scarred for life.
After seeing the doctor and being told that she would need stitches, we sat around in the ER room for another hour and tried to get GG to hold a topical anesthetic to her lip. The doctor said that if we could get her to numb up her lip, we wouldn't have to restrain her when she got stitches. - GG didn't really like to hold the anesthetic to her lip, so we went with plan #2 restrain a toddler.
Naarah left because she didn't want to see what was going to happen, as the male nurse came in with the restraints (1 pillow case and a few blankets.) The nurse told GG that he was going to make her a superman cape and proceeded to tuck GG's arms into a pillow case behind her body. After GG got her cape on, we laid her down, and stretched a blanket across her upper torso. The doctor came by and said, "you better restrain her legs too, you really don't want to be kicked in the head by a toddler..." So the nurse stretched a sheet across her legs.
As soon as the Doctor poked her lip with the syringe GG yelled out "All Done" and began to scream and thrash around. She continue to yell "All Done" and the Doctor said "I bet". GG is strong like bull, it took two grown men, the nurse and myself to restrain her. The nurse laid across her upper torso and I was responsible for laying across her legs. GG is super strong, and I started to sweat trying to keep her from kicking the crap out of all three of us.
It took about ten minutes for the Doctor to give GG 5 stitches and through the whole thing she kept crying and saying "All Done". When the stitching was over, we let GG get up and she was drenched in sweat. Her hair was sticking straight out and she looked like the mug shot of Nick Nolte after he was arrested for a 3 day bender. GG recovered pretty quickly and as we drove home 4 hours after she fell down the stairs, she spend the car ride home pointing out the moon to us.
GG continues her singing career.
Last weekend our friend Anthony brought over his projector and karaoke game and we set it up in our newly created Rumpus Room. The projector gives us about an 8' by 12' screen, and the surround soound really seems to help with the singing. As you can see by the clip bellow, GG has added crowd interaction to her singing repertoire.
enjoy--
Last weekend our friend Anthony brought over his projector and karaoke game and we set it up in our newly created Rumpus Room. The projector gives us about an 8' by 12' screen, and the surround soound really seems to help with the singing. As you can see by the clip bellow, GG has added crowd interaction to her singing repertoire.
enjoy--
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Update on House Work...
Since the wife and kids are off having their "Summer of Fun" I've taken my bachelorhood time to do a lot of the things that I don't have the time or energy to do when the house is full.
Jobs completed so far...
Used the blower to blow all dirt, leaves, and what not off of the roof.
Used the blower to clean the deck and driveway.
Purchased a power washer and powerwashed the deck both front and back.
Power washed the driveway and retaining walls.
Stained the front deck - the wrong color.
Stained a large portion of the back deck.
Picked up and assembled new bedroom furniture.
Partially cleaned out the rumpous room.
Partially clean out the downstairs storage room.
Purchased a new gas weed wacker and weed wacked the yard.
Here are some pictures:
Since the wife and kids are off having their "Summer of Fun" I've taken my bachelorhood time to do a lot of the things that I don't have the time or energy to do when the house is full.
Jobs completed so far...
Used the blower to blow all dirt, leaves, and what not off of the roof.
Used the blower to clean the deck and driveway.
Purchased a power washer and powerwashed the deck both front and back.
Power washed the driveway and retaining walls.
Stained the front deck - the wrong color.
Stained a large portion of the back deck.
Picked up and assembled new bedroom furniture.
Partially cleaned out the rumpous room.
Partially clean out the downstairs storage room.
Purchased a new gas weed wacker and weed wacked the yard.
Here are some pictures:
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