Category: family

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Personal History Prompt Jar

~What could you see from your childhood bedroom window?

~What did you do, as a child, that got you in big trouble?

~Do you remember a favorite nursery rhyme?

~Have you ever gone fishing?

These are just a few of the personal history prompts that we’ve folded up mysteriously and sealed into a class jar. Someone you love–grandma, grampa, mom, dad–then, chooses one question each day to trigger a slew of childhood memories. It doesn’t matter so much if they write them down in a formal journal or a simple spiral notebook, as long as they start putting it on paper…for the rest of us to enjoy.

Probably the number one reason people hesitate to begin a journal or personal history in the first place, is because they have no idea where to start. So what better gift to give them than a box or bag or–in our case–a cleaned candle jar–of daily prompts with intriguing questions that will actually be fun to write about. If they answer only one question per day–in six months they will have quite an impressive history. And who knows? That history may just be their Christmas present to you–next year!

Instructions:

Click on the link below to make your own copy of the prompts. Print them on white or colored paper–or both. Cut them into strips. Fold them and store them in a bottle or box. Tie a ribbon around it–and there you have it. A family heirloom in the making. Oh, and adding a pretty pen and notebook or journal is a nice touch too.

 

 

Click the following link:

Personal History Prompts

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The Bald Kid’s Frankenstein

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Nothing beats a good book. Everybody knows that…

Our family book club finished the Chocolate Touch last week, and promptly moved on to Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. Ewwwww…Not so sure how I’m feeling about that. Perhaps I’ve shared with you my sentiments on severed body parts. And now, the fact that some nutty guy has sewn a bunch of them together, hooked up some jumper cables to the dead dude and has him stomping around scaring people doesn’t make me feel any better. I know, I know…I haven’t read it yet, so how can I possibly judge? Right?

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Yeah, well, maybe I haven’t read the book, but I have seen the movie. Ok, not the real movie, but the Abbott and Costello version and that’s good enough for me. The monster does have some pretty cool boots but the stitches in his head really creep me out. And his eyes…why doesn’t he open his eyes? If he did, maybe he could put his arms down and walk like a normal…ummm…dead guy and not draw so much attention to himself.

Ok, I admit it. I’m stalling. But I have good reason to. It all stems from the fact that Frankenstein and I go waaay back. Back before most people reading this were even born.

Yeah, I’m that old.

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Anyway…so I have this big brother, right? My sister and I share a room with him and he has a few strange hobbies.

1. He collects bugs, and moths and spiders and pins them to a styrofoam block…sometimes while they are still kicking. Vile.

2. He saves dead things in the patio freezer–like an old owl and a huge tarantula because someday, he’s going to be a taxidermist and he wants to be ready, so he’s saving up. Disgusting.

3. He has a thing for building toy models. Not car models, or plane models, ohhh nooo. The only kind he is interested in are the monsters. He has Dracula-with blood running down his face. He has Wolfman-with his dirty, pointy teeth. He has Creature from the Black Lagoon–with green and silver claws. All very, very nasty.

But the dumb model that really kept me awake at night, the one that I couldn’t take my eyes off when I was in the room alone, the one that looked like he was gonna swagger right off that ledge and pinch me in the neck with his creepy out stretched hands, was Frankinstein. Of course he was carefully arranged on a shelf right across from my bed. The better to see him with.

Photo from IMDB

You know, I wasn’t stupid. I knew it was a silly piece of plastic, glued together and painted by my morbid brother…Igor. But the thing that got me, that kept me wondering and tossing in my little seven-year-old sleep, was the fact that my brother…Boris, loved to tell me that someday when he had enough money, he was going to go down to the hobby shop and buy a motor. He was going to put that motor in old Frankie-boy’s back and bring him to life where he could promptly take good care of any annoying little sisters that might happen along. No jumper cables needed. Listen, my brother was Vlad the Impaler so, yeah, I believed him. OK maybe I was stupid.

At any rate, what it boils down to is that Dr. Frankenstein’s monster and I are not pals. Not even close. But I’ll read the dang book, because it’s Rhen’s tough-guy choice and I want to be a sport. So it better be good. But when it’s my turn to choose, you better believe, I’m gonna make them all read Little Women or something so girly that their toenails curl up.

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Because nothing beats a good book. Everybody know that…

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Nest Building

Lyndi, at last, is beginning to look like she’s expecting. Her body is so long and willowy that her baby girl has been able to hide away from all of us…until now. She kicks and squirms so much more these days, like she wants to be sure we know she’s there, waiting to be ours. She’s like her mama that way. They haven’t settled on a name yet and so the sweet thing has been dubbed Baby Chomp after the Nintendo character. Lyndi says, “You know that phase where you’re just starving, so you eat…and then 5 minutes later, you’re starving again.” Baby Chomp…get it?

Of course, she felt like she was eating everything in sight–like Pac man–tortillas, Tillamook, Goldfish crackers, Teddy Grahams and anything with cream cheese on it. All of which was very new and scary to this daughter. But I think her body was making up for all the year’s she spend flitting and dancing around forgetting to eat altogether. She’s happily somewhere in the middle now.

So, as the temperature keeps dropping and we huddle in a bit more closely to home, I’ll start pulling out some of the finer yarns and slightly smaller hooks and begin the stacks of toasty things, to keep the new one coming snuggly warm. The booties and socks and caps and leggings. Then to rekindle interest in the dozens of half-worked projects waiting to be finished.

There are 4 or 5 shawls and wraps in the works, countless slippers for 20 or so feet, new hats for the twins, soft, jingly toys–with no noisy microchips attached–thank Heavens, and my own version of “doggy dollies” –that I will show you in the next little while. A few piles of crocheting are for now, most have the Christmas deadline–and the rest are for January…for that tiny face we don’t know yet.


All to keep my baby birds warm till spring.