This is my grandfather, John.

Like my father, you never know what he will do to make you laugh.  Whether intentional or not my father and grandfather never cease to make me laugh.  I was perusing pictures from a trip I took with Derek, Stephanie (my sister), and my parents to New Orleans two years ago to visit my grandparents.

While sitting in a gas station parking lot we witnessed one of the funniest things ever.  I’m serious.  Everyone in our car was about to pee on themselves.  We were laughing so hard tears were streaming from our eyes.  Did I mention my mom also gets a kick out of the zany things my grandfather does?  She does.  Let me tell you that we all love my grandfather dearly.  He is a brilliant man with a kind heart, and an even friendlier disposition.  And the same can be said about my magnificent grandmother, Maria.  (Not the zany part…the brilliant, kindhearted part)

Back to the story….right!  Me, Derek, my mom (Becky), Stephanie, and her friend Kristen are all in one car.  My dad, grandmother, and grandfather are in another car.  My grandfather went in the gas station to use the restroom.  When he came out he walked up to what he thought was the car my dad and grandma were in, opened the back-driver side door and started to sit in the car.  As he is doing this we all watch in amazement as the faces of the people sitting in the front seat of the “wrong car” stare at him in bewilderment.  Everyone in our car was cracking up…crying we are laughing so hard.  Meanwhile my dad and grandma are yelling at him out the window of the “correct car” JOHN….WRONG CAR!  JOOOOHN!!!!

Oh geez…that man cracks me up.  BTW…it didn’t bother him one bit.  He just got out of the “wrong car”, and hopped into the car with my dad and grandma.  And off we went.

On Saturday Derek and I took a break from painting the outside, cleaning storm windows, and repairing the wall in the living room where now only plaster remains (since last week I peeled off like eight layers of paint and the 60 year old wallpaper they were on top of) due to a hole in the roof that was causing a giant water bubble to form beneath this painted paper monstrosity.  Okay, so I fudged a bit on how much work has already been done…the painting has yet to commence, nor have the storm windows been cleaned.  But we thought about doing those things, so that counts, right?

So, like I said…we went to the lake on Saturday to catch some rays, and hang with some friends and family.  FUN.  The day began with me feeling guilty, as usual, for leaving the dogs at home, so I shoved tons of food and treats into these two treat-dispensing ball thingies the dogs love.  They never knew we left.

Once there we tied up with our friends in one of the coves on the lake, jumped in the water and enjoyed the sunny day.  NOT A CLOUD IN THE SKY.  Guess that’s how I came to look like a raccoon later that day.

As a kid I never went to the lake much so I use to always wonder… what do people do at the lake if you don’t jet ski, wake board, or water ski? Well young Jennifer I will tell you…

You just sit in the water.  Really.  You just SIT.

This past weekend we simply tucked ourselves back in one of our favorite coves, and just floated all day long behind the conjoined boats.  We were so far back in the cove no other boats were behind us or even to the side of us for that matter.  We spread out in the water as far as we wanted.

One of the favorite flotation devices of the day was an inflatable dingy with paddles.  Amy brought her boyfriend, Matt, to the lake (excellent guy…good pick Amy).  Matt is some sort of bio-something engineery person.  That means the guy is like super smart or something, but I guess all the book learnin’ in the world can’t help you accomplish a task an 8 year old can complete.  Watching that guy struggling to figure out how to make the one paddle into two separate paddles; made me wonder about the guy.  Sorry Matt…watching you stare at those paddle pieces like a rubik’s cube was way too funny not to mention. After what seemed like hours Matt finally accomplished his goal.  GOOD JOB!

Our friends Ryan and Meredith took part of the crew tubing.  I’m sorry I missed getting to watch that.  They came back with some hilarious pictures.

And a few questionable ones…

In all the day was perfect…right up until the last 30 minutes or so.  I say this because the most tragic, horrific, unimaginable thing happened.  Up from the murky bottoms of Pickwick flew the creature that has eyes so severely irratated by the harsh mid-day sun it has to live at the bottom of a muddy, algee ridden, dead fish filled lake just to mute the  scourging pain that awaits her on the surface.  This creature of murk, do you freakin’ know what she did?  This little *&#T*^ saw me in my stylish Banana Republic, UV protecting, Jackie O-style shades and feels that she deserved them more.  Next thing I know I tilt forward in the water while sitting on my little pool saddle.  Pool Saddle :: a blue foamy thing that sits between ones legs to keep them buoyant in a body of water.  Yep…it looks like a diaper!  So there I am mysteriously tilting forward, adorable sun glasses on my head, and the next thing I know ~ s l i p ~ there goes Jennifer’s adorable sunglasses.  The sunglasses she wore on her honeymoon, the sun glasses she thought were so adorable she decided to break her rule of never buying expensive sunglasses! FRICK! FRICK! FRICK!  Yep, pretty sure those were the only words that exuded from my lips.  FRICK!

Derek being the sweet husband that he is attempts to dive down into the murky water and comb the bottom of the lake with his hand in an effort to recover my precious babies.  With 3 attempts down and us and the boat constantly drifting he finally had to call off the rescue effort.

We leave the lake and head home with my nephew JD in tote, and decide to stop at Sweet Peppers in Corinth, MS for some dinner.  I guess my parents stopped at Sweet Peppers the night before with my nephew on the way down to the lake, because the employee that brought us our meal told my nephew HEY I KNOW YOU.  YOU ATE HERE YESTERDAY.  My nephew, JD, replies back with YEA, I DID.  The employee asks WELL YOU MUST REMEMBER ME TOO, RIGHT?  I BROUGHT YOUR FOOD TO THIS TABLE LAST NIGHT.  JD replies with a pompous NO I DON’T REMEMBER YOU AT ALL!

Being the good aunt & uncle we are, we remembered to let the little guy use the restroom before we got back on the road to Memphis.  Just as we are 30 minutes from our house JD asks if we can finally stop.  I’m all why?  He’s all cuz’ I’m about to pee!  I ask well how long have you been holding it.  He replies  A REALLY LONG TIME.  He said he didn’t want to bother us and ask if we could stop to use the restroom.  Sweet kid.  Sweet kid who almost urinated inside my brand new car.  So there we are on the side of the interstate with a 6 year old on the shoulder peeing into the wind.  Hey…at least he wasn’t peeing in my car.

Did everyone have a wonderful 4th?  I sure did.  This was my 1st married 4th of July, and the 1st Independence Day spent with my inlaws.

We spent a good portion of the day at my in-law’s pool.  My mother in-law and I caught some rays while Derek and Davis goofed around in the pool.  My father in-law smoked some delicious and extremely messy ribs.  We watched a couple of movies, played a few innings of wiffle ball GIRLS VS. BOYS, and indulged in some brownies a-la-mode…with homemade almond ice cream.

It was a perfect day with one exception…my parents, brother, and sister were not there with us.  My parents drove down to New Orleans with my nephew to visit my grandparents and uncles for the long weekend.

This is Davis, my new brother-in-law.  This picture was taken when we were at a store shopping for “stuff” for our wedding.  Davis and Derek got bored while we were shopping and did this to Davis to entertain themselves.  It is now the picture I see on my phone when my “lovely & magical” brother-in-law calls.

This past Sunday my dad turned 60.  My mom and sister wanted to throw my dad a surprise party at my parent’s house.  Simply due to the fact that my dad lives at the house at which we were throwing the party, it made it that much harder to coordinate.  But with a little effort my sister, brother, mother, and I were able to successfully surprise my dad.  See, about 30 years ago my mom tried to throw my dad a surprise party, but my dad not knowing what was in store for his birthday somehow made it back to the house before any of the guest arrived.  (Way to go dude!)  My mother swore she would never throw him another surprise party….ever.  Well, I guess she changed her mind.

The party turned out perfect.  I have no clue as to how many people showed up, but I do know that the house was packed.  Many thanks to my new in-laws for helping with some of the food, helping set-up, and clean-up the party.  My sister, Stephanie made an awesome cake for my dad in the shape of his boat.  She nailed it on her 1st shot.  Hey, if the whole becoming a pharmacist doesn’t pan out she may have a future in the cake design industry.

I was keeping an eye out for the guest of honor.  I was there for a while….shouldn’t have started quite so early.

Recently I have been getting into researching my family tree.  My husband introduced me to a website called Geni that is part family tree,  part social network.  Geni is free!  My dad, grandfather, cousins, etc. are all using it.

Users can build their family tree through the simple colorful interface. Relatives who are added to the tree can join Geni and add other relatives. Everyone in the tree has a profile which shows more about them and enables other family members to stay in touch with them.  Families can work together to build profiles for common ancestors.  Family members can also share photos, videos, events, discussions, and more.  A family timeline shows the history of everyone in the family.  What’s kind of cool is that Geni was founded by former executives and employees of PayPal, eGroups, eBay, and Tribe…so these people really know how to manage large amounts of data & keep it safe.

Just last week my grandpa emailed me (yes…my grandpa emails) to tell me that he mailed me a copy of the direct decedents of the DAEMS family which is his great grandmother’s branch.

My Grandpa

My grandpa said that two of his cousins, in the Netherlands, researched this some years back.  The information he sent me goes all the way back to the 1670′s.  I was astounded at how far back they were able to go.  I really lucked out with this, because my father and grandparents immigrated to the US back in 1950 from the Netherlands (Holland).  The furthest back I would have been able to find, with US records, would be the immigration of my grandparents & father in 1950.  So to have relatives in Europe to do some of the digging for me was wonderful…I would not have had a clue where to start looking over there.

Since I have been hunting down info about my ancestors I decided to also do some research on Ancestry.com.  This site is great for researching vital records, as long as you don’t mind shelling out a few clams.  I decided to sign-up for just one month and to see what I can find, and to my surprise I located the manifest to the ship my father and grandparents came over from Holland on.  How awesome it that!?!  They even had a picture of the ship and a brief history of it.  Check it out…

S.S. Volendam

S.S. Volendam Manifest

If you have ever thought about looking into your ancestry, give Geni or Ancestry.com a try.  Invite some family members to join your tree, and watch it grow!

I offered to watch my nephew, JD, Saturday night so my brother & Derek could go to the Memphis basketball game.  Knowing that most boys love video games, no matter what age, I thought that we could find some kid friendly games on Derek’s x-box.  When JD said here I want to play this game and handed me the Call of Duty :: World at War box I paused and pictured in my mind the massive amounts of nightmares this bloody & violent game would bring on for this 5 year old.  So I said “ummmm…..how about we find an even cooler game on the x-box?”  (this meaning kid friendly)

We played the movie inspired game Cars, a bit of pac-man, and finally my nephews new favorite game…..Cloning Clyde.  The premise of this game is that someone was cloning sheep & wanted to move onto people & Clyde was that person.  The experiment went wrong and so Clyde has decided to escape in his, opened in the back, hospital gown.

Yes, that is his butt you see.

Here are some pictures of us during our game night…

He took this picture and the one below.

The last two pictures are of him telling Wrigley that he is disappointed in her, because she was being too crazy.  At one point he even had his hands on his hips….how cute!