We had summer weather in Southern California during our week-long visit with family. Record high temperatures--86 degrees Fahrenheit/30 degrees Celsius--were set in San Diego. We enjoyed LEGOLAND again--Grandma Lorraine loves LEGOLAND--and spent one afternoon on the beach. Our granddaughter enjoyed the splash park area at the condo complex where we stayed.
We took a drive up to San Pedro to meet extended relatives of mine on the Hein side of the family. We met at a nice restaurant to share lunch and family history information. Their grandmother/great-grandmother, Lenora Hein, and my great-grandmother, Kathryn Hein, were sisters. I felt like I'd known them all my life. They had an ornate photo album--probably over a hundred years old--and we were able to identify some of the people and places. There was a photo of the church in Iowa where my grandfather--Lester Lohr--was baptized. One of the relatives is in the process of scanning numerous photos to send to me. I now have contact with three branches of the Hein family. If anyone out there reading this has info about Hein family history, please contact me on my website, as we still have several missing branches.
San Pedro has the Los Angeles docks including the cruise ship docks. The restaurant overlooked a marina with some classy boats and yachts. The traffic on Interstate 5 wasn't as bad as anticipated. We made it back to Carlsbad from San Pedro in less than 2 hours, using the HOV (commuter) lanes.
We came home to beautiful weather. It was 17 Celsius/63 Fahrenheit one day last week, but that wasn't a record high for Calgary. It's back to wintry weather this morning though with frost-coated trees and fences. I can't see the mountains today because of the ice-fog.
The redpolls are still here--emptying the bird feeders twice a day. We cleaned out the bluebird boxes yesterday--we remove the old nests, then use a 10% bleach to water solution, wipe them out with paper towels, and line the bottom with cedar shavings. A clerk at the Wild Bird Store in south Calgary told me that the cedar shavings help prevent mites in the boxes. It looked to us like we had mountain bluebirds in two of the boxes; tree swallows in the remaining eight.
The book has gone to the editor, and I'm finishing up the White and Cathro family histories to put the factual information--mainly dates--in the Appendices. I've had an interesting experience writing a collaborative story about two ancestors on the Cathro side of the family. Helping me write the story are our Cathro family history expert located in Dundee, Scotland, and three of our extended Cathro relatives--one who lives in Denver, Colorado, and two who live in New Jersey. It's amazing what this website has done in terms of me finding extended family.
Writing family history is a project that never ends. I've met so many people on the journey, and I hope to get in touch with more. In the meantime, the month of March will be a time of revising this book and getting it to a publisher.
It looks like March is not going to come in like either a lion or a lamb. That's more of a rhyme than a true weather predictor anyway. People on the Prairies love to talk about the weather though--the latest thing I've been hearing is "we are going to pay for that nice late January and February weather." Time will tell.
Happy St. Patrick's Day to all of us with some Irish in our family history. Green is the Color!
We took a drive up to San Pedro to meet extended relatives of mine on the Hein side of the family. We met at a nice restaurant to share lunch and family history information. Their grandmother/great-grandmother, Lenora Hein, and my great-grandmother, Kathryn Hein, were sisters. I felt like I'd known them all my life. They had an ornate photo album--probably over a hundred years old--and we were able to identify some of the people and places. There was a photo of the church in Iowa where my grandfather--Lester Lohr--was baptized. One of the relatives is in the process of scanning numerous photos to send to me. I now have contact with three branches of the Hein family. If anyone out there reading this has info about Hein family history, please contact me on my website, as we still have several missing branches.
San Pedro has the Los Angeles docks including the cruise ship docks. The restaurant overlooked a marina with some classy boats and yachts. The traffic on Interstate 5 wasn't as bad as anticipated. We made it back to Carlsbad from San Pedro in less than 2 hours, using the HOV (commuter) lanes.
We came home to beautiful weather. It was 17 Celsius/63 Fahrenheit one day last week, but that wasn't a record high for Calgary. It's back to wintry weather this morning though with frost-coated trees and fences. I can't see the mountains today because of the ice-fog.
The redpolls are still here--emptying the bird feeders twice a day. We cleaned out the bluebird boxes yesterday--we remove the old nests, then use a 10% bleach to water solution, wipe them out with paper towels, and line the bottom with cedar shavings. A clerk at the Wild Bird Store in south Calgary told me that the cedar shavings help prevent mites in the boxes. It looked to us like we had mountain bluebirds in two of the boxes; tree swallows in the remaining eight.
The book has gone to the editor, and I'm finishing up the White and Cathro family histories to put the factual information--mainly dates--in the Appendices. I've had an interesting experience writing a collaborative story about two ancestors on the Cathro side of the family. Helping me write the story are our Cathro family history expert located in Dundee, Scotland, and three of our extended Cathro relatives--one who lives in Denver, Colorado, and two who live in New Jersey. It's amazing what this website has done in terms of me finding extended family.
Writing family history is a project that never ends. I've met so many people on the journey, and I hope to get in touch with more. In the meantime, the month of March will be a time of revising this book and getting it to a publisher.
It looks like March is not going to come in like either a lion or a lamb. That's more of a rhyme than a true weather predictor anyway. People on the Prairies love to talk about the weather though--the latest thing I've been hearing is "we are going to pay for that nice late January and February weather." Time will tell.
Happy St. Patrick's Day to all of us with some Irish in our family history. Green is the Color!
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