Friday evening

Moved my laptop back to the kitchen table so I could set up the tape player (it's been in the closet for a long time) to see if I can figure out how to convert my music cassette tapes to CDs.  I'm hoping Hunter can come by tomorrow and help me.  I do have some directions typed out so I'm kinda "close" at figuring it out.  Going to have to play around with the fine tuning options to see if I can make the song sound better when I play it back on my laptop.  If I'm sucessful, I'll have a WONDERFUL collection of old music that I can transfer to my Ipod or burn to CDs.  Sure hope I can do it as I love some of those old tunes.

Took a picture yesterday of a science project Hunter and I friend worked on together.  My phone doesn't take the greatest shots sometimes so I'm not sure if you can see the finer points.  Has to do with animals becoming endangered.  They used lego to make a hunter, a fire, and other things. Realy cute.

I typed up all my "Charley Blankenship" notes so I can take them with me if and when I decide to travel across town to the Morman Church library. As usual I was getting nowhere finding anything so I decided to start again with my grandpa's siblings one by one and see if I missed anything that would give me a clue.  I pulled out my John Allan Blankenship file as I found him and his family pretty interesting.  I was able to find a guy (from Texas) who used a lot of the family photos I posted to put in his files.  Our connection seemed to be a daughter of John's (Cecilia) who married twice.  I didn't have a record of her second marriage and that tree has living relatives.  Sure hope I hear from him.

 John (shown here in his later years) was a sheriff and auditor in either Ill or Mo before moving west.
I haven't  been able to find any information about that either...but I will!

                                               His daughter, Cecilia, is pictured here.

Yesterday I spent the afternoon wrapping a few Christmas presents -- just to get them out of the way.

I haven't decided yet if I'm going to get creative and add ribbons, bows, and doodads.  I always plan to and then I can't seem to get them as pretty as I want.  I suppose I could look on Pinterest to get some ideas.  I'm just not very good at crafting sometimes.  I used to be better (I think) but it's still never been a strong suit of mine.  I'm too critical of my final product.  I think I have a missing gene when it comes to art talent.  I remember in grade school that I always wished I could win the poster prize in our healthy teeth contests.  My posters looked stupid and I really wanted to be one of the kids who was good in art.

Art  always made me a tad nervous as I never had the confidence needed.  I think that side of my brain just wouldn't work.  I was the same way in home Ec when we had to sew.  Pure stress. Which I find strange, in a way, 'cause I pretty much like sewing and messing around with crafts. If they aren't too hard.  I know my limitations.  I'd like to be better at knitting and crochet, for example.  I can't even make a granny square!  All I can make is afghans, slippers, and scarves. And even those have to be a really easy pattern.  I can't even make a hat.  I tried to make a teddy bear once (crocheting) but it looked so pathetic, it made everybody laugh. I admire people who can draw, paint, sew, do beading, and all kinds of crafts.

One bad thing about having the computer at the kitchen table is that I find myself staying online much longer than I should.  I've played two games of Scrabble today (beat the computer both times), and heaven only knows why I keep going back to Facebook time and time again.  Afraid I'm gonna miss something, I guess. Ha!

Time to sign off, though, and go watch Amazon Prime. First, though, here's a cool video...so sad...