Tuesday morning we hopped into my dad's spaceship (that's what we have always called his suv) and started the 24 hour drive from here to small town Geneseo, Illinois, where my entire Dad's side of the family lives. The drive up wasn't too bad, I read all of The Other Side of Heaven, which I really enjoyed, and got to nap for a good chunk of the drive. As we passed through Iowa we noticed that there was water pretty close to the interstate and once we got to my grandma's house we saw on the news that there was severe flooding in Iowa and they had to close down the highways and whole towns were underwater, it was really sad to see.
Basically the whole time I was in Illinois I did one thing. Played cards. I think it must be a midwest thing but my family LOVES to play cards! I taught my grandma how to play this game where everyone plays a kind of solitaire but everyone plays on each others aces and she loved it! I tried to get her to play spoons but she said it was too intense lol. I learned a lot of fun solitaire games while I was up there, my grandma knows about a million card games!
The weather was ok..except for the extreme humidity! I felt sticky constantly! day, night, hot, cold, no matter what it was humid! The only time I really enjoyed the weather was the night it was about to T-storm and Alli and I sat in the driveway watching. There was one night that it was storming so bad, it looked so scary outside, and we were watching the weather channel and there were some tornado warnings in the area, so I kept waiting for the moment when we would all get to run into the basement, but the time never came and we slept through the night safe from tornadoes.
Probably within an hour of us arriving at my grandparents' farm I found the one thing that would make my journey complete. Family history! I found a book that had our family tree in it with birth dates, death dates, etc. going back up to my great great great grandparents, and I also found some laminated copies of newspaper articles that were about family members, which my grandma let me keep and take home. There are a lot of newspaper articles because when my grandpa was 16 there was a car accident that killed both of his parents, both of his grandparents, and his brother. So him and his siblings all had to take care of the farm on their own. All of the articles were pretty inspiring, "Taets Orphans show that when there's a will there's a way" and stuff like that. I can't even imagine what my grandpa must have went through at 16 having to drop out of high school to help work on the farm and raise his younger siblings. It's just amazing. I also was able to go to the cemetery and see the headstones of about 5 of my ancestors, which was also neat. My sister did not enjoy that visit. "Madi, we are walking on someone's face right now!" she kept squealing and whining haha. this last friday I had the pleasure of taking 4 names to the temple for baptism/confirmation that I had gotten from my grandma's records, and it was such a great experience!
That pretty much sums up my vacation, other than other minor activities and meetings. Here are some pictures of the farm and such, thanks to my little sister, since all of my pictures are on my computer that I can't use since I have no stinkin internet!!!
love, Madison
2 comments:
Wow, sounds like you had an awesome time. That is fantastic news about all the ancestry info you got. Also, I had to laugh about the whole midwesterns playing cards. It is so true. I grew up playing cards and watching everyone around me play cards. A household favorite for us is Yuker. Take care and hope to be seeing you soon.
It sounds like such a great vacation, you totally deserved one! And the family history stuff is SO exciting. I'm kind of jealous, my family history has already been done to the wazoo so I'm kind of unmotivated...
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