Category: Family and Friends

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First Lego League State Tournament

Well the State Tournament was today, ALL DAY LONG.  I had no idea what to expect but the kids were real pros because all of them had been in at least one competition before this one.  In fact, the team, or what was left of it from last year, won the best teamwork trophy the year before.  What an honor for them.

You have to remember these kids are 9 to 15 years old.  They’re learning how to do research because they had to do a presentation on something they learned about possibly solving or helping stop global warming.  They’re learning how to work together as a team.  They’re learning problem solving.  They’re learning to be cool under pressure and how to present an idea they have developed.  A lot of adults don’t have those skills and yet they are all very important skills to succeed in the world today.

They’re programing a robot that they themselves built usually from their own design.  That’s engineering. They’re not just ‘playing with Legos’, they’re building skills that will follow them through the rest of their lives and help them excel in what ever it is they decide to do. I learned so much from these kids, far more than they learned from me.  One main thing I learned is that I have to do more research into being a good coach because I really want these kids to do far better than they did this year.

This was a tough year for them.  They first of all lost their sponsor which was a local college and also meant they lost a place to practice.  The professor that started the team with the backing of the college, chose to pay himself so the team could go on.  They lost 5 team members, a coach and 3 mentors which had been the fathers of some of the kids that quit.  Then a local church donated a place for the kids to practice, and three mothers stepped up to coach the kids.  I came in as a mentor but only the last few weeks before the competition.

I wish I could have known about the team earlier.  The mother that coached these kids did a great job and we are all planning a much better year with meetings once a month, field trips for the kids, and anything else we can come up with to keep them interested and excited about what they do.  One mother is looking into food sponsors for the meetings.  If she can get one pizza place to donate pizza one month, I bet their competition will donate another one.  Pretty smart, huh?  I’ll let you know what we’re up to next.

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Happy Thanksgiving

All my children are home, my Indian family is here along with my white family.  We are having a ‘true’ Thanksgiving complete with Native Americans just as the first one had.  It’s that a wonderful day!!  I look at my family and am so very proud to be a part of both of them.

There is so much love and respect in my home today that I couldn’t ask for anymore.  The turkey’s cooking, and all the fixings are cooking too so the house not only is full of love but it’s full of the heavenly smell of a wonderful dinner.

Here’s wishing you a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday!!  May your day be truly Blessed like mine is!!!

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And now down come the leaves

Fall is living up to it’s name.  Leaves are falling like snow.  All it takes is a little puff of wind and the skies are full of yellow, red, orange, and brown leaves.  It’s quite pretty but someone has to get them up.  That someone is ME!!

Thank goodness I have one of those attachments that goes on my riding mower that sucks the leaves up.  The thought of raking and raking and raking just gives me a backache simply thinking of it.  These things are great but one things for sure, you get dirtier than you ever did as a kid playing in the dirt.

Another good thing about them is the mower actually chops the leaves up some and I then put them on my garden before I turn it under.  That helps to feed the soil, keep it moist in the summer and is a great way to compost the leaves when you have as many as we do.  I would guess there are about 25 trees in my yard so that’s a lot of leaves.

I’m so glad we had 4 cut down and 16 topped so they aren’t producing as many leaves as they did before we had that done.  I donated the wood from the trees to a local man that didn’t have any heat besides a wood stove and was quite poor.  He came and picked up the wood and split it himself so all we had to do was pay someone to cut the trees down and top the rest.  Between the tree guys and the guy we gave the wood to, we didn’t have to clean up anything.  In fact, I bet the guy got enough wood to heat his house for 2 winters.  I hope so anyway.

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Happy Halloween

The one thing I miss now is getting my kids all dressed up for Halloween and taking them out Trick-or-Treating.  That was so much fun.  I always dressed up too.  Guess what I went as, an Indian Chief, what else?  My oldest daughter was Pocahontas one year and then the youngest was when she could wear the costume.  My sons preferred to be the cowboys instead of Indians when they were little.

I really miss all of that.  I guess I’ll have to just hand out the candy and wait for grandchildren to take out Trick-or-Treating but I’m not in a hurry.  Did you kids hear that?  I’M NOT IN A HURRY!!!!

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Lego League

I have been volunteering with a local Lego League.  Have you heard about them?  They use the Lego Mindstorm NXT which is robotic Lego’s.  You can go to their web site at usfirst.org and check them out if you are interested in what they’re all about.  Each year they have a challenge that has to do with the environment.  Last year it was alternative sources of fuel.  This year the challenge is on global warming and what you can do in your community to help.

There is a state competition in December and the team that wins there, goes on to Atlanta to participate in the World competition.  There will be teams from China, Germany and many other countries.  I absolutely love working with these kids.  These are our future engineers.  Not only do they win trophies, but they also can get schlorships to some pretty impressive colleges just because of their involvement with this so I feel very blessed to be a part of it.

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About my family

I told you that I was adopted by a white family and that gave me advantages I wouldn’t have had otherwise.  I want you to understand why I was put up for adoption.  Adoption is not a bad thing.  It can be when a mother is hooked on drugs and loves them more than her child or if the child is abused and taken away from the parents but that’s not my case at all.

You see, my parents were young when I came along and they could barely take care of themselves and knew they could not give me what I needed.  They knew this nice white couple that couldn’t have children of their own and they offered to adopt me.  They allowed my natural parents to be a part of my life my whole life along with my natural family.  I never felt that I was not wanted by either side.

I was lucky enough to have two wonderful mothers and two wonderful fathers.  I have more grandparents than most kids have cousins and am loved by all of them.  My life has been blessed from the very beginning and I have passed all that love on to my own children who have a huge family backing them too.  So you see, adoption can be a very loving thing to do for your child.

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Bought a new lap top computer

Now that I’m blogging, I needed a new computer.  My old faithful computer is about 10 years old and is getting slower and slower, kinda like me.  Not really but I have slowed down quite a bit over the past……..well over the years lets say.  I decided to check with dell.com to see what they had to offer and I’m really glad I did.  After looking around their web site, I found the refurbished laptops.  I couldn’t believe how much I could save with a refurbished laptop over a brand new one.

I ordered a Inspiron 1525 laptop and saved 35% off of what a new one would have cost.  I like saving money.  That leaves me with money I can spend on something else I want like maybe a flat screen TV.  I didn’t save that much but it’s a start.

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North Carolina Outer Banks

My adoptive father used to take me to the North Carolina Outer Banks when I was growing up every fall for a fishing trip.  It was and still is, one of the best places to go fishing on the coast.  It has a lot of history along with it.  The numerous shipwrecks in this dangerous stretch of ocean earned North Carolina’s Outer Banks the reputation as the “the graveyard of the Atlantic,” not the infamous pirate Blackbeard, who met his end here.  Coastal erosion and increased risk of damage from storm surges are the real threats facing the area now.

We used to put up tents and camp on the beach while we fished but you can’t do that now in an attempt to keep human erosion from adding to the threat already facing the beaches.  It’s a shame that things have to change like they do and when they do, it’s not usually for the better.  I guess it’s all a part of life like everything else.

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Getting cooler and I love it

Fall is finally coming and I am loving it.  I love to hunt.  Yes I do hunt with a primitive bow like my ancestors did. Yes I only kill what I will eat.  I’m sure someone will read this and wonder how I can kill Bambi.  Well Bambi is not real and hunting deer helps the herd to stay healthy.  Too many deer and there won’t be enough food for them.  They’ll get sick and diseased and slowly die off.  That’s not good.  By hunting them for food, you are keeping the herd stronger.

I hunt strictly by the rules.  I get my license and only kill bucks until doe days.  I prefer to get the old spike bucks so that you weed out the poor racks and build a herd in your area that is more likely to produce bucks with nice racks.  I put out mineral blocks for them through the summer to help make them healthier.  I do feed them apples and corn to bring them in to my stand but I also take care of them when it’s not deer season.  My ancestors taught me to respect the animals as they should be.

Deer season starts soon so I need to get out and practice a while to keep my skills sharp so I hopefully make a clean kill every time.  The last thing I want is for the animal to suffer any more than they have to.  IF I hit one and it doesn’t fall where I hit it, I track it down until I know the animal will either survive or I find it.  I don’t leave a badly wounded animal to suffer.  I would never do that.


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Historic sites and State Parks closing

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s office announced layoffs of up to 450 state employees and the closure of 25 historic sites and state parks. Fourteen state historic sites are scheduled to be closed October 1. Eleven state parks are slated for closure November 1.

Among these sites to be closed is the Black Hawk State Historic Site, in Rock Island, Illinois, which occupies much of the historic site of the village of Saukenuk. This was the home of a band of Native Americans of the Sauk nation. It includes the John Hauberg Museum of Native American Life. The state park is located on a 150-foot bluff overlooking the Rock River in western Illinois. It is most famous for being the birth place of the Sauk warrior Black Hawk. The disputed cession of this area to the U.S. Government was the catalyst for the Black Hawk War.

There is already so much of the Native American way of life gone forever and now this?  Why can’t the white man see what they are doing to OUR countries deep rooted heritage?  We all are now Native Americans and these things must be kept to teach our young of the way of life of Our nation.  Our nation we ALL call America which is made up of many tribes from all over the world.