genealogy – Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs..

Hello everyone! It has been beautiful here lately – finally! We had been hit by constant rain for a week or so straight, and the past few days have been sunny and not too hot. Perfection!

It’s been a few weeks since I posted one of these! We just have had a lot of life stuff that hasn’t been all that interesting, like a flurry of doctor appointments, appointments for equipment for Wyatt, school stuff, just the minutia of daily life. I also started going through areas that I rarely weed through to get rid of things and reorganize. Fun stuff here guys.

I have recently gotten into genealogy again, and have been tromping around cemeteries. There is one that Wyatt and I visited together, but I didn’t want to leave him in the car too much while I searched so that was more of a scouting expedition, that I followed up with a real exploration later that weekend with Billy and Wyatt. I found my mom’s grandparents, but for the life of me I could not find my dad’s great grandparents. My dad, Wyatt, and I went last Friday and finally found them. I told Wyatt we were standing in front of his great-great-great grandparents graves. I don’t think he was particularly enthused, but one day he might be!

If you read my post about my genealogy saga, I had a mystery about an ancestor, Marie Domaine and her mother Josephine Bernard. Well, I still haven’t solved that puzzle yet, and I ran into a new head scratcher. My great grandfather was born in Ireland, moved to Pennsylvania and was a brick layer in the Pittsburgh area. However, I found a passport application that states he was planning to go to Colombia for a month for work, which sounds sketch. Then later, he died after being struck by a car, which isn’t really that suspicious unless you are plotting some sort of criminal story in your mind, like I did. Was he in the mob? Who knows? Lol. Well that might be a stretch but I do enjoy making up these narratives about ancestors right now.

Speaking of my dad, he recently had a birthday! Number 78. We went to his house for a very casual get together and had a great time. The kids had fun playing and visiting their grandparents. There were also three different birthday cakes for us to choose from, so lots of cake!

We kicked last weekend off by making lunches to be distributed to the public. I wanted Wyatt to start becoming involved in community service projects occasionally, and of course our church is a good place to start with him. He was a great helper and I was very proud of him, although I did not have him help make sandwiches. His grandmother did that. Wyatt, Billy, and I were an assembly line of filling the lunch bags instead, which was a much more suitable job for a ten year old.

When we got home, it was time for our Drop In Crafternoon that Lisa at Boondock Ramblings and I are hosting. We had a great time hanging out, chatting, and crafting with the fellow bloggers who have joined us. Since it is drop in, it is all very casual, just come for however long you can or pop in when you can. Send me an email at crackercrumblife@gmail.com if you are intestested!

On Sunday, we went to a nursery garden center that was new to us. Wyatt had gotten a small garden bed for Easter, one that is raised so that he can access it from his wheelchair, and he needed some plants to fill it! He made some good choices – dahlias, a delphinium, and a strawberry plant. It looks really nice! Billy and I had too much fun in the bonsai area and the terrarium areas, poking around. We ended up buying a tiny little silver needle tree (?). It says it gets like 6 feet tall, but we can’t find anything about it online, so I am thinking it has a different name than what it said on the tag. It was in the bonsai area so I am also guessing we can do that with it? Right now it just looks uniquely pretty. I also picked out a teeny tiny little tiger head planter and stuck a succulent in it. I love it.

Afterwards we stopped at Lowes for dirt, and ran into my brother and his family. They were also getting supplies, for Mermaid Girl’s fairy garden.

These guys came over on Monday to hang out, have some dinner, and enjoy the evening. It was a nice time. My mom came too, and was not happy I made her wear a big hat. But it was really sunny and I was worried she would burn. She did it, and I told her she looked like a Dame. She will also be unhappy if she knows I posted this photo of her on here, so don’t tell ok.

I hope you all have been having some good moments filled with smiles and laughter.

So, in my mind I view these updates as different from my Coffee Catch Ups. I feel like in my coffee catch up posts, I focus on the big events. In these, which are more rare, I feel like I share more about the smaller, more everyday, the little things in our lives. What we are doing for joy, the small things, our hobbies. I don’t know if that is what actually happens in these posts, but that is what I aim for.

One thing I have been doing is baking more. With prices at the grocery store getting higher, I have been trying to figure out ways to change our eating habits, by making more and buying less processed versions. I obviously don’t have time to make scratch versions of everything we eat- that would be a fulltime job all on its own, I think. But I have started with some easy, quick things. For one, I “make” my own granola to put on yogurt. That is super simple! Just some oats, maple syrup, honey, cinnamon, whatever bits you want to put in it, and then pop it in the oven for a little bake. I eat this almost everyday for lunch!

I have also been making Wyatt’s beloved granola bars. He loves Kind bars, which are a bit pricey. So I searched online for something to make in place of them. I didn’t find an exact replacement, but I found a recipe for crumbly jam bars that looked interesting so I went for it. The first batch I made was half jam, half plain, because Wyatt is a picky kid with plain tastes. Much like his mother was as a child and still sort of is as an adult. He was not a fan of the version with jam in the middle, but loved the plain version. Mine look like sawdust blocks honestly, but they are so good! They are have this brown buttery caramely oaty taste. I can’t describe it exactly, but they are very good. Even Billy, who is not a fan of that sort of thing, will sneak one now and again. The best thing about them is they only use 8 ingredients and take half an hour tops to make! Some of the ingredients were a bit more up front, but when added up compared to buying actual granola bars it is still cheaper overall, because I can make so many with the ingredients. There is no refined sugar in them either, and while the coconut sugar really isn’t that much better for you, it does have a lower glycemic index so I tell myself they are better. This is the recipe that I use, although I do mix it up a bit.

These are the berry oat bars from the blog The Oven Light. The only things that I do differently are using different flour (I use a white wheat flour), and omit the jam since Wyatt likes them better without. They are super simple and take me no time at all to whip up for the week.

We have also been making our own cookies. I found an awesome recipe for chocolate chip cookies, and it makes so many cookies that we freeze the dough in small bunches to use later.

Later this week or maybe the weekend, whenever I have time, I am going to try making English muffin bread, since we only really eat bread in the morning as toast, and also a different cookie I found last night on Pinterest. They are honey pistachio cookies, and they sound fantastic! Wyatt loves pistachios, and eats them as a snack everyday. I think I will sub the sugar in the recipe with coconut sugar since we like it in the bars. This recipe is from Recipe Yumm.

I have also been keeping up with my embroidery, and with my coloring. I love to sit and color in my cute little book with my new markers while Wyatt paints with his paint sticks. I love these darn paint sticks. Wyatt loves to paint and wants to paint every day – and sometimes it is just a darn mess and a pain to do all the brushes and different paint and water, and well you get it. So on days where I just want it to be simple, he uses the paint sticks. He loves them – and so do I. It’s a very relaxing activity, to sit quietly and paint and color and listen to music. I have my tea, he has his water. I love the simple coloring books best. I don’t want complicated. We watch a YouTuber sometimes who reviews adult coloring books – I can’t remember her name but I will update this when I remember it, or look it up.

Cozy Spaces || Alcohol Markers || Paint Sticks

And then this week, inspired by both Jeanie from Marmalade Gypsy and Lisa from Boondock Ramblings, I have gotten back into my genealogy! I have found out a lot of information, including a little mystery! I had started my family tree a long time ago, before most of this stuff was online, and had a tree of names and was working slowly on sending away for the proof. Well, I was in my early twenties and soon lost interest. I saved everything though, like the little goblin I am, and pull it out every so often and look at it, and dabble. This week though I have gone a little nuts with it. And then I found some information that is super confusing!

Ok so, let me lay this out. My dad’s great-grandmother, Marie, married his great-grandfather, Alexander “Sandy” Walker in 1905. She lists her name as Marie Domaine, and her parents names as James Domaine and Josephine Bernard from France, although they supposedly lived in Pennsylvania, where Marie lived. However, I can only find one of these names, Josephine Bernard. In the 1900 census, a Josephine Bernard, born in France, and her daughter Marie, also born in France (in the same year that our Marie Domaine was born), worked as a housekeeper for a widower named James Cadamore. Josephine was also listed as a widower. Then I find Josephine Bernard later, married to James Cadamore. I find nothing of Marie Domaine or that last name, and no James Domaine. The area is the exact same, the same city in Allegheny county, they have to be the same people, right? But where did the Domaine come from? Did Marie leave home and create a new identity? Lisa suggested that Domaine is her biological father’s name, who if she is the Marie in the census, was born in Belgium. What is the story here? The dates and location and most of the names fit – just that Domaine is weird. What do you all think?

And this is it from me today! I am off to find some more coffee. I hope that whatever you do today, that you do something that makes you smile, my friends!

And don’t forget, we have drop in crafternoons! Our next one is May 24th. If you are interested in dropping by, send me an email at crackercrumblife@gmail.com!