I had a neat day yesterday. I started my shift at 6 am. It lasted till 10 pm. I was so tired!!!!
We had 4 births during that time. They were all nicely spaced and what we call butter births. Just easy nice births with really no problems. Plus I did pap smears too. The one I did was a 16 yr old girl. She was 4 mo pregnant, it’s sad.
The people here are so short. Monica is taller then most of the midwives. They think it’s so funny.
I started to write about Switzerland and the post was lost. There are 2 interns here from Switzerland. One is Elizabeth whom I will show you a picture because she was so kind to take us up to Jack’s ridge. It would have been pretty scary to go alone. 1st of all I need to mention that some of these girls here at the school (there will be 13 of them next month ages 18 to 24) don’t necessarily have a passion for midwifery. What they have a passion for is missionary work. Midwifery seemed to be a good choice for working on the mission field. Which I never realized the great need for midwives all around the world. Although probably mostly the 3rd world county’s.
Anyways I was asking Elizabeth about Switzerland. She was explaining their school system. It sounds so good. They go through 8th grade, but sometime in 8th grade they start trying to find out what the student wants to study for their occupation. They give them tests, take them out to see different occupations. They have you pick a few that you have interest in and you spend a week with working in the occupation and observing. By 9th or 10th grade you start an apprenticeship program. So by the time you are an adult you already have a skill and probably a job. Sounds like a great plan to me. I wish we could start our young people in a skill.
So Elizabeth decided to be a carpenter. She was licensed as a carpenter. She wanted to go on the mission field so worked on the YWAM ships as a carpenter for a couple yrs, then she was working on land for a short time and realized as a women she would not be accepted as a carpenter, So she went back home and decided she needed a woman’s skill and chose midwifery.
I thought it was an interesting story about her life.
Well today I had the day off, so Monica and I went to a “mall” this one was an awful like American malls. One of the stores had lots of fabric. Julia was in dream land. The workers walk around with meter sticks and if you want some fabric they cut it right there. No tables for cutting. We found all sorts of fun little items. We had quite a few bags and they have no carts. At every door you check in your packs with a guard. So we checked our bags with him and we didn’t have to carry them around. Then we decided to try some Filipino items from the vendors. First we tried a fruit shake , it was wonderful. It was fresh pineapple, mango and melon, mixed with a little milk a spoon of sugar and ice. Then we tried fried ice cream, which was not fried in oil,. Only put in a frying pan, I assume cold, in order to make a liquid into ice cream.

had a great day

This a at a pool up in Jack's ridge. It's a water fall behind going into a hot tub, then a slide that Monica is standing next to.


I was on shift last night and 2 babies were born. They were big baby's, over 7 lbs which is very big here. The one mom's name was honey. So I was taking care of my honey I would say. She spoke some English, so this was nice.
It's fun when you can communicate enough to help them through labor. Her husbands name was Andy, and he works at a grocery store. At all the stores they have 2-3 people standing in each isle. I'm not sure why. He said he makes about 150 pesos a day $3. they would love to come to America and I asked him "why, this is a nice country" they have this idea because the wages are so much higher that they would be well off, but their prices are very low here too. So I wonder how much it really helps. An ultra sound costs about 3 days wages, at home a ultrasound costs about $700. whats that about 6 days wages. More if you were working minimum wage. So maybe they are better off here and they don't realize it.
So this evening we went to Jack's ridge. The drive it self is a radical experience. We took a taxi and it's amazing to live through it. I realized they never go over 25-30 MPH, so that's why you can dodge all the cars, dogs, children in the roads.
But it is beautiful on this ridge. You can see the whole city. It's a resort type place. So after we were sweaty and dizzy from going up and down stairs in the heat we went into an air conditioned coffee shop and had a wonderful icy drink. Mine was almond chocolate, Monica had a banana split, much like America, but the ice cream was weird looking. Good, but different. They had big beautiful birds, a neat swimming pool and some shops. We found a few items to bring home.





This is a monkey in a tree
A Parrot

Carlie and Monica
One of the views
Shows how diverse. Rich houses and the very poor all with in the same view.

I forgot a couple of pictures

They people are very funny about wanting their picture taking. This was a sale man in the market. As soon as I got my camera out they all quickly jumped in the picture. They were so excited about the Americans.
You can also get a little view of what the "mall" is like. Not quite an American mall!


There are no dryers here. We do have an automatic washer. I can't help be think of the savings: no dryers, no hot water heaters, no houses to heat. Pretty cheap place to live overall.

pictures

this is our own ambulance, there is a guard here 24 hours a day at the birth center. It does not seem to be a dangerous place at all here though. It's a family orientated society. the director said the crime they have is usually because an argument and it's not just random people getting hurt.
I took a ride in this ambulance once. He had the siren run, but people barely reacted. Going through intersections hoping the other car will slow. I realized it's probably because the cars are going fairly slow that keeps them from accidents.

the picture below is the interns house. It is defiantly a nice house. Just down the street there are shacks, but on this street there are quite a few nice houses like this. The birth center is trying to buy this house. They will never let anyone that is not Filipino buy property here. the director has lived here for 11 yrs ( she grew up in Troy, MT), but they will never be able to buy property. So they have Filipino midwives that will buy the property.


This is a picture of the birth clinic. It's 3 story. The upper floor the Philippine students live. They are being sponsored from the school. It's a great opportunity for them. If they go to school here for midwifery they never let them deliver baby's, they are really more of a orderly. So they have 2 of those graduated "midwives" that know how to make beds, but don't know anything about delivering babies.
the second floor is the prenatal room and an education room. The prenatal room is air conditioned. So NICE.
The bottom floor is has the kitchen and bathrooms. They have lunch and dinner for us if we are working.
this is the street that we live on.
this is Jossie, the directors daughter and Monica's friend.

This is the living room and dining room in the house we stay in.
Monica and her friend on the couch. The baby in the one picture is Carlie. One of the interns daughters.
















So glad to have Internet again. I feel so lonely when it's not working.
We just had another very slow night at the birth center. I'm on again tonight and I looking forward to a time when they get busy again.
I've just been hanging around today trying to endure the heat. Rest up a bit. We were going to go into town, but it's a big holiday here, and traffic I've been told is so bad that we best not venture out. Monica had a friend spend the night, and they just left to go play basket ball. I can't imagine playing basketball in this heat.
It's so sticky that I dread changing clothes because they stick to you getting them off and on.

just got back from shopping

well I went to an ATM and took out 2000 pesos. Sort of scary because I'm always trying to figure it all out and it sounds like I'm spending a lot. Well I spent 600 of it at the grocery store. We bought a big box of cornstarch. Monica really wanted me to, cause it was 80 cents for a huge box. I got a couple things of chocolate, and some really neat soap they have here. I want to bring it home. I'll have plenty of room in my suit case because I brought a bunch of stuff for the clinic. But if I don't have room I'll just leave the cornstarch.
the meat counter was meat sitting out in the open and you bag the meat your want. The lady then takes it, prices it it and puts a twister on it. Strange thing is there are no flies here. I haven't seen any. In fact I haven't seen any bugs. One tiny spider, and the gecko, that's all.
So the food has been good. Or at least I can find something good to eat. The food served at the birth center is Philippine. the food served at the intern house is cooked by all the interns. so meals we've had are enchilada's, squash soup, fried potato and eggs. The Filipino food is rice, chicken, chicken stir fry, salad and fruit. they usually serve fish too. So i just eat the chicken and vegetables, or salad.
Monica is going to go over and go swimming with the directors daughter. They are the same age. She is adopted so she is Philippine.

more posts

If you turn your computer sideways in the picture above you can see how high the ceiling are. Tile floors, clean smooth walls. Sorry I can't figure out how to flip pictures. I thought I was doing pretty good to get the pictures in here. right Rick?
The time difference is 16 hours I believe. It's 1 pm Fri here and 11 pm there Thur. Well I actually stayed up till 11 last night. I had to because I was on shift to 10. So I was thinking I am starting to get my head straight with the time, but at 4:30 Monica jumped out because she saw a Gecko in her bed. She climbed into bed with me, and we couldn't get back to sleep. then I heard something sort of suctiony run by my head. Well I think they are cute, but when your tired and you have something run by your head, it's hard to sleep. They are usually just on ceilings and high walls. Well all the walls are high in this house. I suppose since they don't have to heat the houses they might as well have big houses with high walls.
Anyways so I got up again with very little sleep, only problem is that I have to work night shift 10pm-6am. so why try to get my sleeping time in order?
I did prenatals all morning. Saw a lady with twins, and had this one lady whose belly button was way up by her ribs. I wonder where it is when she is not pregnant. It was fun for me because I had a student working under me, and I got to teach. I like teaching, but I usually feel like I don't know enough to teach anything. I still have so much to learn.
I have only heard 2 phones ring the whole time I've been here. Just not their culture. So weird for me, eh! what I have seen a lot of is these little cell phones they text each other on all the time. No one calls, they text. It's only 1 peso a text.
We share a room with 2-3 other interns.
There are no hot water facets. All sinks only have one facet. It's not really cold or hot. It's just always lukewarm. they do have some electric heater things int he showers, but you would not want to turn them on. It's so sticky already. Last time I took a shower I brought a fan in the bathroom, hoping it would make it easier to dress. It didn't help. This one is side ways too, of the shower. The house we live in is very comfortable. the shower is more like a room that gets the toilet wet too. All the CR which means comfort room (bathroom) have facets in them. In the Philippine bathrooms there is no toilet paper, just those facets next to the toilet. most toilets don't flush, they have a dipper pan next to the toilet to dump some water into it to flush it.
Did I tell you they have no stop sign or lights here.


I suddenly got tired and I think I better take a nap so I can be somewhat awake tonight if there is a baby.

finnally have time to catch up

I wrote this on Wed. and I didn't have internet at the time to send it.

It felt like this was the longest day. I got up at 4 am. My shift started at 6 and by 9 it felt like noon, by noon 4. I think my body knows what time it is back home.
It’s only 7 here, but Monica is already in bed too tired to change her clothes, and I am tying to stay up till 8. I had only one shift today. Did prenatals and observed one birth and transported one lady to the hospital.
They are very patient here. They don’t try to hurry anything when it comes to the birth. They use almost nothing disposable. So all the under pads, rags go to a laundry where they get bleached. The only disposable item they use are gloves and those are used sparingly. But everything is simple and clean. Set up very nice.

The hospital was so crowded. Lines of beds with sick people with no one attending them, no monitors, one man looked like his foot had been wrapped, but there was blood dripping to the floor. What so sad is we have to transport there because they have rules just like the states, in this case the babies heart rate was 190. She was already dilated to 9. We started an IV, gave oxygen and still was high. So we had to transport but they don’t do anything there at the hospital. They don’t treat her like it’s any big deal, because they usually only have 2 doctors for 140 bed hospital that usually has 160 patients admitted. This is the government hospital. There are private hospitals that have much better care. And even though it’s only about $60 these people cannot afford it. Most of these patients make only about $2 per day. An ultra sound costs 400 pesos, about $8. So we are asking them to spend almost a weeks wages if they need an ultra sound.
They only take patients at this clinic that make less then a $80 a month, live in a certain area, don’t have Hepatitis, don't have hepatitis, promise to make it to all prenatals. They said they have this criteria, so they don’t get more then they can handle. It gives the poor a chance to have good clean care. Something they can’t get at the government hospital. But she also told me they are not very strict with their rules. They are very missionary orientated. Pray a lot with the patients. We actually have a place on the chart for prayer.
So one of the interns took Monica to Paradise island. She took a motorcycle to the boat, crossed over to the island, where she collected shells, swam, and drank fancy drinks. She had a great day. If I wasn’t so tired all the time I think I could enjoy it more. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. I’m so hat and tired. It’s so sticky. The fans really help.
The fruit here is incredible. I had a mango for the 1st time today. They have weird fruit that I have never seen. One looks like a large grapefruit, but it tastes like a pomegranate.

4 am

Here I am at 4 am. It's dark here. If I can shift my sleeping scedurle that just a couple more hours I'll be doing fine with the time change.
So we had our tours of the birth center and the student housing. The student housing where I am staying also is a big house with 5 bedrooms an office, living, dining, kitchen area. Big windows everywhere, all tile or wood floors. In fact there is tile everywhere. Everywhere you go the floors are all tile or marble. the birth center is 2 doors down the alley. It's a good size building, nice and clean.
So far the food has been great. We were thinking we would miss peanut butter here, and it turns out you can go and get fresh ground peanut butter really cheap. Most things are cheap here so far.
Monica and I went to a store yesterday. It’s only a short distance, but walking was hard because there are no sidewalks and the traffic is terrible. Little children walking on this road with cars zooming by them. It scared me.
It’s not like a loud city though. They honk, but no one seems mad. They are a gentle polite people. So on the way home we took this little motorcycle thing. It has a seat attached to it. We paid 20 cents for him to bring us home, then once I got home we found out we were overcharged! It's usually 6 pesos (12 cents).

It’s a huge city, a million people. Crazy with no stop signs or lights that I have seen. The driving seems very dangerous to me, but they say there are not a lot of accidents. Lots of motorcycles, bicycles, little taxis.

When we got to the mall, Monica asks, "why is everyone staring at us" We were the only Americans in this very crowed mall. We were a spectacle I guess. They almost all speak English. We were hungry and started looking at all the food stands. The bakery's looked wonderful. We saw one stand with hamburgers. It looked like a huge white dry bun with a tiny patty in the middle. It looked awful. Most of the food looked so weird and awful we were wondering if we could find anything healthy to eat. Well we finally decided to try these little balls. We could watch the man make them so we felt better about it. He had a mold, like a tiny cast iron muffin pan. He would put some batter in it, then some red onion, then he covered it thick with chopped cabbage. then more batter. It was really a skill to watch him flip these balls as they cooked.
We got 4 balls for about 50 cents. She wanted to put mayo, fish sauce, etc on them, but we asked for them plain. They were great.
Then we gave in a got a chocolate cake. It was a big piece with thick chocolate frosting. it was 21.75 pesos. Well the coins are very confusing to me, and they can all tell I'm American! That is less then 50 cents, but how do you split a peso? centavos, are like quarter of a penny? I think , I still don't have this figured out yet. I feel like I could use a 2nd grade school book on the money lesson.
their sweets are not very sweet. The chocolate frosting was really good, not just sugar. The cake was like a sponge cake. Not from a box. I don't think they have boxed stuff here.
This mall had a grocery store in it, and lots of little stores, but Monica was thinking mall like US. It's very different.
I found a pair of burkenstaks looking shoes for $4. I'm sure they are not quite as good, but they are pretty close. I was happy because we cannot wear our street shoes into the birth center. I need more support then flip flops.

They don’t even have hot water heaters. The water just comes out luke warm. I had a shower yesterday and it felt really good. I won’t miss the warm water. Except to wash dishes. It was weird to wash in cold water.
Well I start my first shift at 6 am, and it's strange to be hungry this early, but I'm going to go eat a little something to start my day.

a few pictures

Monica closing the suitcase again. The boys was there in Spokane to send us off.


We had a cozy time the two of us, most of the time we tried to sleep as much as we could. This isn't a very nice picture, but we took it ourselves!





This picture was pretty young women dancing as we came off the plane in Davao. Dressed very nice and modest. The people dress very nice here. You see very little immodesty. they are very polite people, calling me mum, but meaning mam.

the adventure begins......

Well our adventure is starting.
Monica and I have been packing, sewing, making phone calls and all it takes to get things ready to leave a household. I’m not sure if I got everything done, but I doubt the household will fall apart in just 3 weeks. ☺

Mishael and Cody are staying with us right now, so she will make sure people eat.

Gina will be home for one more week and then she is off to school. Rick and Moriah are bringing her down to Bozeman on Sat. She is so excited.

Then Rick is going to take Jon on a little trip and take some vacation time. He’s been working for 3 yrs straight without a vacation. He is just planning on driving to see an old friend.

Well we left Sat for Spokane. Staying in Spokane overnight.
So we got the airport around 11:30. This began the trip that gave no rest for the next 32 hours. The 1st mishap, they couldn't find my ticket, then they found it, but they said it wasn't paid for. Well this was only the beginning because the whole trip had little problems like this.
From Spokane we went to Salt Lake, Salt Lake to LAX. LAX we should have had a 3 hour break. After waiting in very, very long lines, they inform me that I needed a notarized statement that I am able to bring Monica out of the country. So running all over the airport to find a notary, and $27.50 later, back into another line, we finally got our boarding pass, for the flight that will last 17 hours straight. Only to find out they couldn't put Monica and I together! (After lots of juggling the flight attendant did get us together)
It was so crowed in the airport there were people all over the floor, fans blowing and people yelling out which direction to go to. It felt like I was already in a foreign country.
I was fascinated though at the different culture on the plane. On the domestic flights many people are to themselves and on computers etc. This plane was full of family's, with very quiet children, and very friendly people for the most part. They all yelled whew or oooh, when we hit air pockets, and then when we arrived the whole plane cheered and clapped, and the lady next to me squeezed my hand with joy.
Well I was very happy too. that is a long time to sit in one seat. It was very uncomfortable. They fed us dinner at 2 am (because we were headed to the Philippine's we should have meals on their time right?!) But I wanted to be asleep. Needless to say it was a very long night. Even Monica said she was tired of flying as we went to get on the last plane in Manila. In Manila was another exciting time of running, running , running. they lost the baggage, so they were working hard to find it, but each time you go back and forth you go through immigration again, showing passport, tickets and going through security.
Well we are excited to be here, and we are already getting to see the culture a bit.
I'd like to say more tonight but even though it's only 7:30 here now, it's 5 am at home and I can't stay awake any longer. I was aiming for 8:30. Good night for now.
I have a shift at 6 am already, so I better get some sleep.

reunion pictures

Now I tried to flip these pictures but they are still side ways! I'll have to learn how!
Upper pictures Joy and Martha
June, Jean and Joyce with Mom
We figured we had 13 boys under 9 yrs old at the reunion. A little crazy at times. In this picture we have Tony, Issac, Sebastian, and Lee.
On the bottom picture: Miriam, April, Jenny, Moriah, Monica, (notice how tall she is) Martha, Corine, and Mom.

getting ready for our trip

Busy, busy weeks. 1st getting ready for the reunion. now getting ready for our big adventure to the Philippines. With a birth in between!
The reunion was great. Hanging out with my brother and sister and the whole family , eating lots of great food, talking, talking, and eating. for 5 days. There were sometimes up to 47 people!
So Monica and I are leaving on Sat. That leaves us 3 days to finish getting ready, and Thursday I have my last prenatal day before I go. so can I get ready on time? I dreamed that I wasn't ready and I was begging the pilot to be able to leave the next day! I'm beginning to wonder if it might come true!
So much to do.......

Gina's tea

thanks to Maria and Martha we had quite the goodies.




wanted to do something special for Gina's 16th birthday in November. That time of year is always very busy for us. With Thanksgiving, Christmas and LOT's of birthdays. Besides last yr I had about 8 babies due within a few months. One set of twins, and 4 ladies due ON Jan 2nd.
So I ended up having her party in April.
It was an old fashioned tea and hope chest party.
Everyone was to dress old fashioned and bring a present for her hope chest. We had bought the hope chest on her birthday.
The girls helped me get everything together. We printed pictures and made little scrap books. Everyone had a great time.
Here's a picture of all 7 of my beautiful girls.
Sorry I don't know how to flip pictures around.
The party was held at the birth center.
She ended up with lots of nice presents for her hope chest and lots of nice memory's'

I'm trying to get some pictures in

I finally got it to work.
this picture is James on his 8 yr old birthday with his nephew's, Hans and Eric.

normal busy day

Well thankfully our electricity was only out till Friday night. Rick, Jon and Monica had arrived home before me and decided to trick me. They turned off all the lights and fans, so it was pitch black. They came out as I drove up and said, it's so dark we can't even find the matches. But just as I was about to walk in the door, Jon flips on the porch light and they all start laughing. Crazy family! It was certianlly a relief as I didn't know what I was going to about the fridge and freezers.

Well Friday I had a postpartum visit on the West Kootenai. (75 miles away) I brought Monica, Mark and James along. I figured we could go swimming after the visit. Well I ended up with a prenatal too, and after 4 hours of waiting we finally got to the lake at about 5 pm. We took a lovely swim. The water was warm and clear. It's so beautiful to swim surrounded by mountains.

Mishael, Cody and Gareth are moving in with us today. They need a couple months to fix their house up, and needed a place to stay. This way Mishael can run the house while I'm in the Philippines too.
Hope this goes ok......

Interesting week

We started the week hoping to get a lot accomplished, but things don't always go as planned.

We are having a family reunion of sorts. My brother Jim and my sister Jeannie are coming up from Colorado. Their children are coming too, so all together it's going to be about 47 people. June, April, and my mom are already living in Kalispell.
So we have to finish lots of cleaning projects and yard work before everyone gets here.
Now the last few weeks have been very hot here. It is not normal for Montana to be this hot for more then a week. So the heat can slow us down anyways.
Monday ended up full of errands, Tuesday a sweet little baby girl was born. They called me at 8 am and delivered by 11:15, of course they don't go home till 6 or 7 pm though.
Then Wednesday we had childbirth classes at the birth center planned. We had quite a crowd. It's really nice because a lot of our moms like to come back and join us for our special classes. so it's quite a time of visiting and weighing babies too. We also had 4-5 prenatals to squeeze in during the busy day. It was fun but very busy.
I got home about 6 or 7, we had dinner and just as I was about to take a shower (which I never got), Maria called and said " do you know their is a tornado warning" "the tornado is heading towards Libby!" Well we have had some pretty good storms here, but never a tornado because the mountains keep them from going very far. Well with in a few minutes the sky got dark, and the wind was blowing pretty good. It wasn't very bad, lots of thunder, lightning and wonderful rain. Our cherry tree stayed in a permanent wind blown position. We had a couple of trees come down. And...... this is the big AND.... we lost electricity. This was Wednesday night. we have been told that we might not have electricity again till Saturday! When we loose electricity we loose water too. plus we have the fridge and freezers to think about.
So today was wasted in town as we didn't want to stay home, Friday I have the postpartum visit in the West Kootenai (70 miles from home), I thought I would bring the children and go swimming on the way home and there goes my week.
Well this is our life, it's always something it seems, but it's ussally exciting!

July 4th

The evening of July 4th was a lazy evening with only 3 children home. this seems to be happening quite often where our big family isn't so big anymore.

Gina was down in Kalispell doing fireworks with Ben, Joe & Moriah. Jon went with his friends family to Troy where they have a big production.

James wanted to go so bad but they ran out of car space.

Now MT in July it doesn't get dark till 11 pm.

well I took James to town to find some fireworks. I found someone putting off some over the river. It was beautiful In the dark you could see the river in the back ground, you can smell the water and hear the rush over the rocks. then the fire works would go off over the river, and it was a beautiful seen. I never grow tired of the beauty around here. I just constantly soak it in.

I think we live in one of the prettiest places in the world, and I'm constantly thankful for this blessing. Most of my children have grown up here and I wonder if they know how beautiful it is or is it just something they have always seen?

Camping trip

the last couple of summers we wanted to go camping. the older children we took camping quite often, but the younger ones have missed out and have never been camping.

So i decided instead of waiting for a time when we could all go and get out of town, I would just take the children somewhere local, so rick could come after work. we drove about 25 miles up the reservoir to a nice camp ground. I didn't want to ruff it too much. we got there in the afternoon and all the children set up the tents. we had Kendra and Lynette with us too. It was so much fun.

after we got all set up we went down to the "beach". It actually has sand ! but the water was low, and so we went to the deeper water so it was fresh. we jumped in and the cold took my breath away. but you get used to it. It's really weird how you hit spots that were as warm as a bath tub, then a wave as cold as ice water. I swam for a whole hour or more. It was so beautiful water as far as you can see, with beautiful mountains surrounding the water. I didn't see a person or a boat in sight.

we spent 3 days eating smores, smores and more smores. sausages, hamburgers, hat dogs and more smores!! I don't think we ate very healthy the whole time. I read Bruchko to them, they played games, and the boys fished. They caught about 27 fish and loved it!

Well after 3 days we were talking of going home. when suddenly a storm came up. I heard a huge tree snap and the wind was blowing hard. It was scary with out any cover. we started packing up as fast as we could. we finally got packed up and squished in the car, down the road a few miles and there was a tree in the road. The van could almost make it under the one side but the branches would scratch the car. We found a sharp butter knife and Jon and Mark started cutting branches with it, while we laughed at cutting a tree out of the road with a butter knife. It actually worked and we made it through.

So our camping trip was so much fun. No bears attacked, in fact we didn't even see a deer. It's funny because we see many deer everyday around our house, but we go way out camping and didn't see one.

Hopefully I'll figure out how to put some pictures in here too.

starting a blog!

I've been thinking of starting a blog for a while.

I'm not exactly sure where to start or how to do this but I'll give it a try.

I think the main reason I would like to try my hand at writing this blog is for a record of our lives. I would love to read a journal of my grandmother or great grandmothers daily life. I used to keep a journal myself years ago. It is very interesting to read back. It's too bad I quit writing. I've tried to start up again and it just doesn't seem to click any more. So now I will try a blog. I hope I can find a spell checker on here, since I have never been good at spelling.

The nice thing about the blog is that it's like writing a letter to everyone that wants to read it.