December in Utah

December 19th we got up early and Connie drove us to the airport. We flew directly into Salt Lake City and were picked up by Jeni, Aidan, Isaiah and Noah. Jeni took us to her house where we visited for the day. We went out for dinner at the Golden Coral, a favorite buffet of the children. Then we dropped one suitcase (full of presents) at Erik's house and Jeni drove us up to Katie and Mike's house. They were loaning us the use of Michael's car to drive up to Logan and spend a few days with Dan and Cheryl and their family.
So we arrived in Hyrum about 10:30 PM ... and after a brief visit, we crashed!
We did various things at Dan and Cheryl's house. We went out to lunch with Cheryl, Kenya, Yzabel and Camden at McDonald's and picked up some Look-See-Do items at the Dollar Store. We had dinner at Cheryl's parents house with some of the Hill family who were visiting for the holidays. (Very yummy chicken pesto sandwiches and fun helping with a from-scratch gingerbread house!) Friday we had dinner at Dan's next door neighbor's house. Joyce attended Hiram Johnson Senior High School in Sacramento at the same time as Ron and I and assumes we are old friends! She lived on Lemon Hill Avenue about 2 blocks from Kathie's home on Nona Way.
Saturday, December 22, we visited the North Logan home with our realtor and discovered several items that have to be completed ASAP in order to show the house better (clean, replace 2 bedroom rugs, remove lowered ceiling in kitchen, etc.) We also discovered more furniture and items in the storeroom than we remembered. We will recover them when we return to sign the contract! (ever hopeful that will be soon...) We did not get to visit the business that Dan was considering buying.

Here is a hawk that landed on Dan and Cheryl's deck after attacking a little Junco near the bird feeder.

Saturday afternoon we drove to Bountiful to visit with Katie and Mike's family. We babysat while they left to celebrate their wedding anniversary in nearby Salt Lake City. Unfortunately, Baby Samuel was crying unconsolably when they returned! We all attended Church on Sunday. Ron and I attended their ward genealogy workshop class, where members were learning Legacy, a genealogy software program. The teacher explained some of the features to us, who are always interested in learning new things (genealogically speaking).

Monday was Christmas Eve and we were busily working away, when Katie realized she had not thawed the very frozen organic turkey. So after determining that 4-5 hours was not sufficient to thaw and cook it for dinner, Katie and I ran down to a local health food store and purchased another and some other ingredients. Dinner was served at 6 PM with Clinton also in attendance. After dinner cleanup, and Clinton had left, the children were allowed to open one present: their new Christmas pajamas! Katie and I stayed up to 2 AM setting up the teepee she had sewed and filling stockings!

In the morning, the children were lined up and with cameras running, allowed to check out their stockings, open presents (one at a time) and play in the teepee. Their family was due at the Hansen house in Sandy at 9:30, so they left at 9 AM. Ron and I stayed and held down the fort. We called Clinton to see if he wanted us to come and visit him, but he had skiing plans for the day. Michael's grandfather Dean was doing poorly in the hospital, so they dropped by to see him before returning home. We left their home about 4 PM to travel to Sandy to stay with Erik and Missy. We found Missy home sick, while the rest of their family was over to her father's house. About 7 PM, I started with chills and by 8 PM I was in a warm bed, having taken Vitamin C and Airbourne.

The next morning we found out that Isaac had thrown up several times in the night but was feeling better. I was also a bit better, having done Vit C and Airbourne two other times in the night. Patrick said he had been ill with fever and chills but was feeling better. Missy said she was feeling better. Some mysterious virus - or two? A family get-together later that day was a serious debate: but we decided to carry on.

Dan and Cheryl arrived about 1:30 and others drifted in from then until 4:30. (Clinton arrived and promptly laid down in our bedroom; he had chills.) Dan, Cheryl and Missy worked on completing the assembly of the Air Hockey table that Erik and Missy did not complete for Christmas. A large crew put it in place. Dinner was at 5 PM (6 foot sub + salads, chips, etc.) After dinner, we opened presents and then proceeded to work on the Look-See-Dos that Jeni had organized as a gift to the Primary Children's Hospital.

The next morning found Abbey sick with possible Strept throat and Missy not feeling well again. I was tolerable. I drove Abbey to the Dr and she confirmed Stept and Missy's Dr also put her on antibiotics. After lunch, we went to spend a few hours with Jeni. Jeni and I organized some household things while Dad collaborated with Amoz' brother, Joel, about art. Later, Jeni, Aleya, Ron and I delivered the Look-See-Dos to Primary's Hospital. We returned to Erik and Missy's to check up on them. Later we visited with Baltimore friends, Jill and LaMont Hadfield.

In the morning, we loaded up Logan's Jeep, which they had left for us to use, and traveled down to stay with Pat and Kat. We dropped in briefly then went to visit some old Baltimore friends, Michael and Darlene Rhodes. He is a professor at BYU and was a PhD student at JHU when we first arrived in Baltimore. His wife has MS and he spends a good portion of his time taking care of her. He has written several books, papers, etc. He is curently working on completing an unfinished manuscript of Hugh Nibley.

Dinner was Sushi, which Pat and Kat brought home for us to sample. Pretty delicious. Their boys gave us a tour of their video game/TV set up in their newly finished basement! Pretty nifty for 3 boys and their friends. Pat, Ron, Logan and Christian left to go to the Orem Fitness Center to use the gun range for Christian's-turning-twelve activity. Christian decided just to watch - the noise was too deafening for him to participate. But he had a good time, nevertheless. Erik, Mike, Isaac also attended this event.

Patrick has lost 40 lbs in the last 4 months. He looks and feels terrific. He has been mountain biking, snowshoe running up the mountain trails, swimming and running. His goal is to enter a Xterra Triathlon (.93 mile swim, 24 mile bike ride, 6.5 mile run). While the men were off doing their manly-man thing, I was quizzing Katarina about their diet. That will be the topic of another posting.

Saturday, Dec 29th, Pat, Kat, Ron and I went down to Provo to visit with Ron's Aunt Zelda and Uncle Jay at an assisted living center. They are within months of turning 90! Zelda is the most frail; but both have some health issues. It was wonderful visiting with them. They had some pretty funny stories to tell - one about Ron when he was a child!

Meanwhile, in quiet moments, I was still trying to update my computer with iTunes, Picasso and various other things that were lost in my latest "RESTORE" right before we left. Dad bought another portable hard drive so we can each have our own and figured out how to have it automatically save my materials each night at 7 PM. Hopefully that should help with that problem. Computer genius son, Patrick, also is in the process of trying to fix my old computer's hard drive enough to get some of the data off that. Hopefully that will be completed before we leave tomorrow morning!

Our next adventure will start tomorrow in sunny California visiting daughter, Rachael, hubby Steve and their four children!

Dry Pack Canning - Ants and Grasshoppers...

Friday, November 2, 2007

Wednesday, October 31, 2007 Dad and I got up at 5 AM in order to make our 8 AM appointment at the Church Dry Pack Cannery in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. We left the house around 6 AM and actually arrived about 7:40 AM. Considering we had to battle the traffic on I-83 coming into Baltimore from Pennsylvania, the 495 Beltway, I-95, and the 695 Beltway, we thought we made good time!

It has been a year or so since we last visited the cannery. We wanted to replenish our supplies of sugar, white flour and also try some white wheat. We like the convenience of #10 cans for storing things like flour and sugar, although we might be able to get comparable prices from sales or the 25 lb bags at Costco. With the humidity here in Maryland, storage of such items can be a problem. We also have white buckets full of all kinds of items, but the #10 cans have become our preferred way of storage.

We had heard a rumor from home teachers that the canneries were closing down, or some were. After talking to the new head man at the Marlboro cannery, Dad was assured that was not correct. The Church had simply re-evaluated offering things that did not have a very long shelf life. However, a recent study has shown that some items have a longer than previously-thought shelf life. See http://www.providentliving.org/content/display/0,11666,7797-1-4222-1,00.html.

We were able to get white flour - which doesn't have a very long shelf life but not able to get re-fried beans. We are hoping that changes in the future, since we enjoy the convenience of the re-fried beans. I guess we are not bean connoisseurs like others in our family. Katie, Jeni and Missy have been using a softer wheat (yellow wheat) to make bread. One of the places they can get it is from the Bosch store in Sandy, not an option for us! So we thought we would experiment with what is available here. I will be making bread today - so I will let you know what happens.

One might think that we would be satisfied with all the food and other supplies that we have in our basement storage room. However, Dad and I have a compulsive need to feel safe and secure. In our minds, it is similar to the parable of the Ant and Grasshopper, which we discussed as we were driving our "loot" home. I suppose it is just one of our life's missions. And actually, it is better than hanging out at the bar, gambling or other foibles. HA! If you need any encouraging as to Why Do Food Storage, check out this site: http://www.providentliving.org/

Our age is really starting to show. By the time we had done 400 lbs of wheat, 300 lbs sugar, 300 lbs of white wheat, and 9 cans of hot cocoa mix, I was totally exhausted. And I did not do the lifting of the bags from the warehouse to the cart and then into the cans, and loading the Durango, like Dad did. When we arrived home about 1:45 PM, we were very stiff and sore. We could barely get into the house....

Then after a short rest, muscle-man Dad unloaded everything into the basement! He has more strength than 2 men!

One would think that walking 4 miles every other day and working out at Curves 3 times a week would keep me somewhat physically fit! However, after this 4 hour shift at the cannery, I realize that maybe all this is barely keeping my head out of the water. We do this exercise hoping to stay as active as possible as we age. I can't imagine what we would be like without the exercise?!

So the food/other storage has leaked over from the main storage room to the downstairs guest bedroom closet... Dad has upgraded his inventory list... We feel more content...

Genealogy Trip to New Jersey October 2007

On Wednesday, October 24, 2007, we left our home in White Hall and drove to New Jersey to spend a few days going to Genealogical and Historical Societies in Salem and Cumberland Counties to further my knowledge of the Husted family in that area in the late 1600s to 1800s time period.

Our friend, Beth Powell, had received a notification of a Family History & Genealogy Conference sponsored by the local FHC and The Cumberland County Historical Society which would be Saturday, October 27, 2007. Several of the talks interested me: Roots Research in South Jersey, NJ State Archives, Obscure Sources and Deeds in Cumberland County. Beth also invited us to stay at her parents' beach home in Ocean City, Maryland while we were up there! So we decided to take her up on that offer and save some $$ as an added bonus!

I printed off some information from the CLUES - Connecting the Libraries of Cumberland County, New Jersey website, which listed the names of several genealogical places in the area and I was ready to go. Ron brought all his art gear, a book to read, and a radio and ear phones to listen to Rush Limbaugh.

In preparation for the trip I did a couple of things. I had bought some FamilySearch business cards from the Distribution Center while in Utah last week. Very often, when I met people I want to exchange email address with them; but I don't have a business card to easily do that. So Missy suggested that I print my information on a label and put it on the back of the card. So I made up some of those. Also, I carefully made a schedule of places to visit, what hours they were open, etc.

We drove from home directly to the Salem County Historical Society. It was open 12-4 on Wednesdays. The first thing I always look at in a new HS is to check the Family File. I xeroxed some material from the Husted FF and some obituaries from another source: indexed scrapbooks full of obituaries, the earliest dated 1893. This Historical Society did not seem to have too much other information that I did not already have, so I crossed the street and went into the Salem County Courthouse. I looked through the Grantor/Grantee Deed books for any early material and made a copy of a deed from Isaac Johnson, Esq. to Hosea Hewstead in 1829, just for fun. But could not find anything else too interesting.

Ron drove around a little and took some pictures of some interesting sites. This area is very old, being established about 1670s, I believe. This Church was across the street from the Salem Historical Society and the house was found while he was driving around. This afternoon might have been a little boring for Ron; it was rainy, so the light for taking pictures was not the greatest. He sat in the car and listened to the radio and worked on a picture.



This is the Church across the street from the Salem Historical Society.



One old house that Ron found.

The Courthouse closed at 4:30, so then we drove to the beach condo. After a few phone calls to Beth, in the rain, we got the garage door number correct and got in! Her father had inherited the original house; tore it down, designed a new place and had it built. The street level was two sets of 2 car garages with a front door and entryway in between. An elevator or stairs took you to the second floor condo (theirs) or the third floor condo (Beth's cousin's). It was very spacious, with 3 large bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, family room, formal dining and large formal living room with game tables, large deck overlooking the ocean, etc. We felt very blessed to have been able to stay in this wonderful place while we were here.

We asked someone about eating establishments and were told about the Crab Trap across the causeway (bay). Evidently, Ocean City New Jersey has no liquor allowed so the main eating establishments were across the bay. They served way too much food, so we brought half of it back to eat another day.

Thursday, we got up and took about an hour walk along the boardwalk. The weather was gloomy but at least did not rain during that time. Most everything was closed for the season; but it was a nice walk, with the wind blowing against us one way and pushing us the other way.

Then we stopped at the local McDonald's and ate (GASP!) breakfast. I selected the sausage on a biscuit and OJ. Ron got Egg McMuffin. Off to the Vineland Family History Center (thanks again to MapQuest, which was hard to follow; but when we stopped to ask directions to Vineland, the man said you are here!). The FHC hours posted online were inaccurate, so when we got there I had to call the Director, who told me it was now closed Thursday during the day but open in the evening. I had been previously been told that they had a collection of local films from the FHL in SLC, so that was my interest in going there. So we found the local Vineland Public Library (thanks to the CLUES listing) and I had an adventure in the Local History Room, looking at old books, finding some pictures of Husteds who served in the Civil War, etc. Ron hooked up to the wireless internet, could listen to Rush and catch up on all his blogs, etc. I drove over to the Vineland Historical Society, leaving him there.

The Vineland Historical Society is in an old building built 1910 in the downtown area. It is on a one way street. After going on two different streets THE WRONG WAY, I finally figured it all out! (I wondered why that man was shaking his hand at me?) They don't believe in large signs to announce that a street is one way....Heck! they know which way the street goes... The main person who works at that library was on leave of absence. They have hired the fix-it-up man who came originally to fix some water damage in the basement to help! That was interesting; but he did have an interest and helped me find some items. They had 12-20 books that were xerox copies of notes from a very famous local researcher, Charles E Sheppard. I have looked at them on microfilm at the FHL in SLC. Unfortunately they are not indexed, and one needs to go through each book and see what he has in there. I did not have time, but the helper man copied one set of notes that an independent person had made on the Husted family. He also pointed me to a set of Ledger Books, where another person, Charles Couson Baker, had gone to every cemetery in the area in the 1930s and copied all the headstone information. This also was NOT indexed, so every page had to be scanned and Husted family information had to be gleaned out. We also could not xerox this book, so I just typed the information directly into my computer. (TEDIOUS work, this genealogy). I need to check to see if the FHL has microfilmed that set of books!

When I went to pick up Ron, I asked a library patron about any good restaurants around and he pointed us to The Garden Room. It was in a strip mall in an area that looked a little run-down. But the food was delicious! I had a salmon with crab topping, Ron had shrimp dish. We got to the FHC just in time for it to open and quickly discovered that they did not have much that I was interested in. But the librarian told me that I might want to visit the Lummis Library of Historical & Genealogical Research in the little town of Greenwich; which was a very quaint town, she said. Ron found directions using YellowPages.com and printed them off. There are no major or direct roads to some of these little places. This resulted in a minor adjustment to the pre-planned schedule; but the local expertise and input was very helpful!

Then off to the condo. We could not get Internet (unless someone else had it available, Beth said); so Ron did some reading and I transcribed some stuff into my PAF program.

Friday, Ron hit the McD's and I was ready for something healthier. So a local Wawa had fresh mango slices, OJ, banana, an Odwalla bar and nuts for me. We went to the Cumberland County Library and checked out their collection, which was not much. But they had a very modern library with carrels, electrical outlets, wireless internet and we checked our emails. The librarian was from the town of Greenwich and told me where to find the Old Stone Church, where lots of early Husteds were buried, and also gave me a free Cumberland County Map! We left about 12 to find our way down to the Lummis Library.


Greenwich, Cumberland County, New Jersey was founded in 1670s. A colony of Quakers first settled the area (Fenwick's Colony), then a group of New Englanders from Greenwich, Conneticut came in and gave the town its name. It is a very darling town with little 2 story houses dating to the 1700s and perhaps a few from the 1680s. The road to get there ends at a T with the town main road going to the left and the right. We turned to the right and hit a dead end at this very old house on the water. It was still raining off and on, so we did not get more shots of more of the houses. Some of the houses have been designated historic with labels outside. I understand that it has to be updated using its original dimensions, etc. for this designation.



This Greenwich house was very old and had lots of additions.



Looking from the Greenwich house which overlooks the water, there is a wharf.

Ron found the only local eatery and got lunch for us both, while I went in to puruse records. In the Husted Family File I found a printed page of a James Husted, with the name of the submitter - a woman from WHITE HALL, MARYLAND! I was flabbergasted and I have left a message on her answering machine... Some other thngs that I discovered was some xerox copies of a David Husted bible and a xerox copy of an old letter from a David Husted, his spelling is hysterical! All stuff that I have to go through and put into my PAF program.

I have decided that the only way I can figure this family out is to carefully document each branch and see who is who, who belongs to who, etc. Unfortunately, New Jersey has lost many records that would be important: yearly tax records and, 3 US census records (1800, 1810, 1820), for instance, so records are few and far between. It will be a monumental task to figure this family out!

On the way home from Greenwich, we drove some little roads, getting lost a few times. I took pictures of what is left of the Old Stone Church cemetery. The original Church is long since gone. I did not see a tombstone for any Husteds (saw other related lines) but every tombstone that I saw was from the 1700s. They were pretty well preserved! We also found Husted Landing, a boat ramp in the middle of wetlands (marsh lands) and the Husted-Bateman Road, and the local Husted Boat store.



The Old Stone Church Cemetery is now in a forest.



We saw many signs telling us Husteds lived here. My genealogy cousin, Wil Husted, grew up in this area.

We arrived to the condo about the same time that Beth arrived from Baltimore. She was staying over the weekend and into next week, when her parents were returning from Florida. We had a good visit, ate leftover Crab Trap food plus a salad from Beth and had a good visit. Beth was showing me some new "pendulum" thing she is into. It showed that the Vitamin C that I have been using is not healthy for my body; that my calcium supplements were okay if with one of her Nikken supplement. Interesting. Of course, Ron was skeptical!

Saturday, we packed up and left for the Workshop at the Vineland FHC. Ron went back to the Vineland Public Library, found a quiet research room and began painting a scene he found in the Baltimore Examiner - a new newpaper in Baltimore. It was a reprint from an old picture taken about 1900 on Lombard Street, and was advertising an exhibit now going on in Baltimore. Wait until you see this one! Very impressive.

The workshop had 4 sessions and they were good. Ron drove over for their free luncheon and then came and picked me up at 1:30 when it was over. I wanted to go to the Vineland Historical Society again, so I dropped him off at the VPL and picked him up after it closed at 4 PM. By this time, the rain had stopped and we saw the sun for the first time in 4 days! We arrived home in White Hall about 6:30 PM.