Things I'm Thankful For! Day One

Happy November everyone!

Apparently, the thing to do during this month is to post one thing that you are thankful for each day until Thanksgiving or the end of the month.  So, I have decided to do this.  I challenge you all to do the same thing!

The first thing, and thing I am most thankful for, is God.  Yep.  God is number one on my list.  I am so thankful for God and everything that he has done in my life.  I have been through some pretty rough spots in my life and I would not have made it through without him.  Thanks to God I am the person that I am today.  Sure, I still have my days of being incredibly disappointed in the world around me, but on the whole I am a pretty happy person.  God has brought some pretty amazing people into my life and I am truly thankful for that.  I am even more thankful for him sending his son to die on the cross for not just my sins, but for the sins of the world.  Knowing that I have his love has got me through some pretty tough times and I will forever be grateful for that.

There you have it!  Day one of November is checked on my list.  What are you thankful for this day?

Until next time!

Stay wonderful and beautiful!

Ich bin ein Preuße, kennt ihr meine Farben?

Hello everyone!

As of late I have been getting some questions about my ancestry.  Specifically about how I can be Prussian if the nation of Prussia does not exist anymore.  Today's post will not just be about my family.  Rather, today's post will be about genealogy.  I have been doing my family's genealogy for quite a while now.  So has my mother's side of the family.  It is ridiculous how much we know about her side of the family!  Of course, if you knew who was in my mother's family you would know why it is plentiful to come by.  Yes, on my mother's side I do have royal and noble blood and that makes finding out about various family members very easy.  I will leave it at that.  My father's side. Not so easy.  Why?  Mostly because his family has had no interest in learning where they came from.  He is also American Indian and that complicates things a lot!  Scattered in today's post I will have tips  for those of you who wish to trace your family back as far as they can. Without further ado, let us start digging into our pasts!

To answer the questions about my Prussian ancestry I will say this.  The farthest back that I can get in my Prussian ancestry is to a male ancestor, I will not mention names on here because of who members of my family are, and he came from Bartia.  Where the heck is Bartia?!  Bartia does not exist anymore so it is not too surprising if you have not heard of it.  In fact, it would really surprise me if you did seeing as how the only person that I have ever met that knew what I was talking about was a college professor of mine whose family also comes from that area.  Bartia is where the Bartians lived.  Before I get flooded with questions as to who the Bartians were I will answer that for you now.  The Bartians were one of the Baltic Prussian Tribes, of which there were between 9-13 (that depends on who you are talking to).  They lived in the area that is now part of Poland.  Wait!  Wouldn't that make you Polish?!  Nope.  Way back in those times the Poles were a West Slavic group of tribes.  They did work their way up towards the Baltic region, but that was a bit later.  So, to answer the question outright as to whether or not I am actually Prussian.  Yes!  I am in fact very, very, very Prussian.  On both sides of my family.  I will get into this topic now.

As I said above finding out about my mother's family is ridiculously easy because of their ridiculous record keeping about family births, baptisms, deaths, moves, and every other thing about the family.  My father's side is the exact opposite.  Finding out about American Indian families is hard.  This is because they just did not keep records.  We can only trace my father's American Indian lineage back so far and then it just stops.  Although we can get pretty far back!  Thanks to census records and oral history of the tribe we've got quite a bit.  There is however this wonderful, although some would argue it is horrible, quirk in our tribe.  Way back when, the Oto-Missouria tribe did love them some French and Dutch fur trappers.  Those French and Dutch fur trappers brought with them their need to keep records and keep track of every thing.  Of course, they also tried to convert us to our own religion, but we will forgive them for that.  They did not know any better.  This has helped finding out about my father's family a lot easier.

Filling out a census is a pain in the butt.  I hate filling them out, but they are necessary.  They also are a great help to anyone trying to find out anything about their family.  Without these census records I would have never found out that part of my father's family came from Canada.  Yep.  I have always known that the Oto tribe lived way up in the Northern United States, but I did not know that they actually lived for any length of time up in Canada.  Now, part of my mother's family does live in and are from Canada.  So, having Canadian relatives is not that much of a surprise.  The surprise came with it being on my father's side.  I even traced that part of my family back to Harald "Bluetooth" Gormsson.  I am his 40th great grand-daughter.  If you know anything about Nordic history you should know who that is.  He was the King of Danmark and Norge.  The Bluetooth communication technology is named after him as well and uses his Rune initials. Funzies!
 
Another surprise came when I was tracking down parts of my mother's family that had not been explored.  That is when I found this lovely person on my family tree.
 

 



Who is that handsome devil?  That is a cousin of mine...kind of a distant cousin, but a cousin none the less (Distant cousin to my family is 3rd cousin and back).  That man is Georg Friedrich Ferdinand Prinz von Preußen.  Yep, that is the Prince of Prussia.  You can read more about him, his lovely wife, and the House of  Hohenzollern by clicking on that picture of him.  Like I said, I am Prussian.  There is a picture of the Prince of Prussia.  So, yes, you can be Prussian even though the country does not exist anymore.  We still have a prince!  He does not have any political power and he does not really want any.  Either way, I admire him.  He is pretty awesome and I found it interesting that I am related to this man. 

Is there a point to all of this?  Do you really need to know about part of my family's history?  Not really, but there is a point to it.  I would have never known about being related to the Prince of Prussia or that I was even Prussian had I not had any interest in my family's genealogy.  I had always been told that there was noble and royal blood in my family's past and now I know where it comes from.  Actually, it comes from both sides.  Some of the stories that I had been told about my family turned out to be true!  You never know until you look it up.

Okay, okay, so the point of this post even though it is really long is this: learn about your family history!  You might even find out that you are related to someone famous.  You might even learn that your family was from a country that you didn't even expect them to be from.  I was not expecting to have more of a family connection than my first cousins on my mother's side be from Canada.  I defiantly was not expecting the Prince of Prussia to pop up on my family tree or the King of Danmark and Norge.  Learning about your family history is exciting and it can make world history more exciting if you know that your family had a hand in some of the events or lived through some atrocities that happened in the past.  It has defiantly changed my world view.  I look at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and it means more to me now because part of my family wanted that built that as a symbol of peace.  It is now one of the most recognized monuments in all of Germany!  You never know what you will find out about your family.  So go out and learn about your family and your history!

To help you along the way here are some of the most helpful sites that I have come across when doing my family's genealogy.  Some of them are free and some are not.  RootsWeb is free and one of the most useful ones that I have come across and is basically a free version of Ancestry.  I recommend an Ancestry account if you want a paid for site.  It is wonderful and has the most resources of any site I have come across. Have fun and I hope that you all find something interesting in your family history!

RootsWeb
Ancestry
My Heritage
Family Search

A Brief Update!

Hello everyone!  Happy Thanksgiving to my wonderful readers in and from Canada!  I love you all!

I have not forgotten about you all!  I promise.  I have been and will be pretty busy for the rest of the month, but I will try to post something soon.  So, what is going on that has me so busy?  I will tell you.

First off, for those of you that have not heard I will be having a book signing coming up.  It will be in Stillwater, OK at their public library on the 26th of this month.  I would love to see you if you are in the area!  It will be a lot of fun.  I am also doing a reading from my book that day later in the day.

Also, next week is Oklahoma Grand Chapter of Order of the Eastern Star.  I will be helping with one of the banquets and as such I have a lot of things to get done.  It will be worth it in the end!

This past weekend was Spiritual Boot Camp at my local church which turned out to be a lot of fun and we also were getting ready for a wedding at the church the coming week.

I also have my usual things to do like work, tutoring kids, good old fashioned book learning, and other fun stuff like that.  So, I will be pretty busy and hopefully I will be back to posting on a regular basis after this month is up.  You can also look forward to the new website!  I will tell you more about it as it is being finalized.

Until next time!  Wish me luck on my book signing!

Stay wonderful and beautiful.

October's Opal Birthstone!

Shalom!

I hope everyone is doing well.  It has been crazy busy where I live.  However, I have been working hard on keeping you all informed on various things.  So, it is October.  This month is full of various holidays!  We have: All Hallows Eve, Samhain, Winter Nights, Thanksgiving (for Canada), Columbus Day, Nanomonestose, and a whole bunch of made up holidays like Mole Day and Sweetest Day.  For me, I have family with birthdays this month.  What is the birthstone of October?  The Opal is the traditional birthstone of October.  However, with Opal being a fragile stone, the alternative is Tourmaline.  Today I will be talking about the Opal, since it is the traditional stone.  So, on with the post!

Opal is a type of silica that contains about 6% to 21% water.  It is commonly found with sandstone, basalt, and rhyolite stones in Australia.  In fact, 97% of Opals in the world come from Australia where it is considered the national gemstone!  Some Opals come from Mexico or Oregon.  Fun fact, Opal is the only stone that can throw off every colour with minimal cuts to it. 

Speaking of Opal colours, it comes in many different colours.  The most desirable Opals are the ones that throw off the beautiful plays of colour.  Sometimes if the stone is clear and has a great amount of colour play it is called a Jelly Opal.  However, you can also find more that are a milky white, bluish green, yellow, brown, and colourless.  Many of these opals are not very desirable.  However, there are the beautiful Mexican Fire Opals and the Mexican Water Opals.  While they do not give off a great amount of colour play, they do throw off green flashes.  Fire Opals are a red to a yellow colour while Water Opals are clear with a blue green colour inside.  Black Opals are extremely hard to find and are considered to be some of the rarest Opal one can find.  However, Boulder Opal is even more rare and is very beautiful as well.  Boulder Opal is Opal that is found in small streaks within other the surrounding stones.  People will often polish the whole stone into a cabochon and make it into jewellery.

Opal

Boulder Opal

Fire Opal

 

Opal is almost always polished into a cabochon.  Because of the nature of the stone it makes it near to impossible to cut the stone.   The nature of the stone also makes it incredibly fragile!  You would not believe how many people come in to the jewellery store with broken Opals.  We have even gone to put a new Opal into a ring with an already broken stone and broke the stone we had to put in there.  It can be quite frustrating.  This is the reason why most jewellers will dread selling or even seeing Opal rings or bracelets.  If you are going to buy an Opal your best luck is going to be buying pendants and earrings.  Because of their fragility, imitation Opals are very common.  Thankfully, they are also incredibly easy to identify if you know what you are looking for.  Chances are, if it looks like thin little triangles or squares put together and sealed under something, chances are, they are imitation.  Very rarely are they real and a jeweller will let you know if what you are looking at is imitation.  If you come across a piece when you are out and about and you are not sure if it is genuine, there is a simple test that you can do at home!  If you hold the Opal in question under a UV light and it fluoresces then it is genuine.  If the Opal does not fluoresce under the UV light it is NOT genuine!  However, if in doubt just take it to your jeweller and they will be able to tell you if it is genuine or not.

Before I close, there is a common superstition that if you wear an Opal and it is not your birthstone it will break or you will lose it.  This is not true at all.  I have a PANDORA Pink Opal ring that I wear all the time at work and it has never cracked, never been lost, and I have never had any problems with it.  It is just a fragile gem and you have just as much chance of cracking it as someone born in the middle of October.

So, I hope you learned something new today about this beautiful stone.  If you have any questions feel free to ask! 

Until next time!  Stay beautiful and lovely everyone!

Tips for College: Be Social

Hello everyone!

Let us talk about being social in college.  This is important!  Yes, being a good student and studying so you can do well is even more important, but so is having a social live.  There are numerous reasons for this.  Today I will talk about just a few of the more important reasons.  So, let us get started shall we.

First off, I should probably give you all some background on my social life so that you will see where I am coming from in terms of my social life.  As a child and up into my young adult life, I was shy and did not make friends easily.  Yes, I was in numerous extracurricular activities in school, but that does not equal being social.  On the whole I tried to keep to myself because I had issues with some of the other students picking on me since I was the "smart kid"  and I never really told anyone about it because when I did it got worse for a bit.  My mother always told me that they only picked on me because they knew it bothered me.  As long as I ignored them it seemed to be manageable.  Part of my problem may have, and probably still does when it comes to the random moments of social awkwardness that I still experience, come from the fact that I am the youngest of 10 children. Yeah you read that correctly.  I have 9 siblings and a plethora of nieces and nephews.  Because my oldest sibling is in his 50's and the next closest in age to me, that is still living, is in his 30's, there I have mostly be around adults.  Since most of my siblings have children and some of their children have children, I have also had a lot of dealings with little kids.  This is probably the reason that most people that are around my age view me as being ridiculously mature for my age.  On the flip side, people that are older than me seem to think that I am too childish because I still enjoy things from my childhood like Pokémon and various other anime, cartoons, and games.  That has turned out to be a good thing though since I connect with little kids and my nieces and nephew seem to think of me as the "cool aunt" and my cousins think I am pretty cool too because I will play games with them, watch cartoons with them, run around the park, and even go to concerts with them.  In high school when I was thrust into a group of four different grade levels from the entire city I was kind of at a loss as to what to do with myself.  It did not help that when I was in 4th grade my older brother, he was a teenager at the time, shot himself in the basement bathroom of my grade school.  That was the first time that the death of a person had really hit me hard.  Because he was close to my age we got along really well, not that I do not get along with my other siblings.  That we the first time I had seem my brother Robert get mad like that, throwing his keys, kicking his VW van, and what have you.  However, a friend of mine had asked me to go to church with her a few mouths before and I had been going there for a bit.  This turned out to be a good thing because I had a good support network, small though it was because of how shy I was at the time.  I still go to that church and if you are wondering why I am bringing this up, here is why.  In high school I had a few good friends, but I still got tormented about being the "smart kid" at times by the same kinds from junior high.  However, there was always one boy outside of my friends that whenever I saw him in the hallway or in line at lunch he always said "hello" to me.  I think, I am not sure since I am not in his brain, that he probably recognized me as someone from church and that was why he talked to me when he saw me in the hall.  Maybe it was because it seemed like every time that I saw him I was having a bad day and I looked stressed out and that I needed someone to acknowledge my existence, I have no idea what it was that made him say hello, but he did.  His name is Brett.  I sometimes sit over by him and his wife at church, she is an amazing photographer by the way and if you live in northern Oklahoma and need someone to take pictures she is your girl.  Turns out, when I went out to dinner with a group of friends, him and his wife were with us, he asked if I had always been a quiet person.  Well, I was until someone actually acknowledged me in the hallway in high school.  That was when I started to be more talkative and actually started gaining more friends.  So, if you are reading this for some odd reason Brett, thank you for just saying "hello" to me in high school.  It meant a lot to me then to have someone acknowledge my existence outside of my small group of friends.

Was I social when I went off to college and then to university?  Well, yes and no.  I was certainly more social than I was when I was a little kid.  I started at Cottey College right out of high school, and I mean right out of high school because I took summer classes online, I only had one friend that was even going there with me.  There was another girl from my school, but she was more of a classmate than a friend.  My friend that was there was in a different dorm and we didn't see each other that often.   So, I was effectively on my own when I actually got to move into my dorm room that August.  In my suite there were ten girls, two of which were from Sweden, two from Texas, one from Chicago, one from Michigan, one from Montana, one from Malawi, one from Missouri, and then me.  Of them, only one was a returning student.  Despite us going through some sticky spots due to our differences, we all got along pretty well and I still talk to some of those girls from my first year.  My second year was a whole other story.  That year was  filled with drama deluxe.  However, I still talk to a lot of my friends there from Cottey.  I was more involved in other activities and have far more friends from the University of Central Oklahoma where I was in a much smaller academic department that was closer knit than a two year "finishing school" like college.

Now on to what this post is actually about.  Probably the most important reason to actually be social in college is, this could possibly be taken as being shallow and I assure you that I do not mean it to be but I will go ahead and say it,  networking for the future.  Think about it logically.  The people that you will ultimately hang out with are your best friends from high school and your college friends.  Who are you going to turn to when you need to get a job?  You are going to ask your friends if they know of anyone hiring in the area you are in or wanting to go, you put them down for references on applications, and you may end up working for them.  As sad as it is, the old saying of it isn't what you know it's who you know when it comes to getting a job is very true.  I ran into this at a place I used to work at.  The management just handed jobs over to their friends without following their own policies and I was overlooked for jobs that I was more qualified for in favour of the management hiring their buddies.  Thankfully, I do not have to deal with that anymore.  So, be nice to your friends as they will most likely end up helping you in some way when it comes to the job market.

Everyone goes through some rough patches in their life and I am no exception.  Thankfully, I have had always had a good support network.  How did I get this support network?  Well, at first it was just my family and it has since grown.  However, these people did not just pop up out of nowhere.  No, I actually had to go out and make friends.  That's right.  I had to be social.  Thankfully, being social at university becomes a bit easier than in high school.  In college you have a vast number of people that don't really know everyone and they are pretty much in the same boat as you.  So, don't be afraid to just go up and talk to someone in the hall between classes or in the department while you are waiting to talk to a professor.  Also, universities generally have a greater number of extracurricular activities and clubs to join than your average high school because of the sheer number of students they have.  Some of which are from completely different countries and their interests tend to vary a great deal.  By joining a club or any other student group allows you to make friends that share the same interest as you.  At the University of Central Oklahoma I joined Chess and Games Club, Medieval Society, and the Philosophy Symposium group.  These people have been there for me through a lot.   They are some of my closest friend that I have.  I talk to them all the time.  I probably would be a lot more stressed out if I did not have their support.

Reason number three, and this will be the last one on this already ridiculously long post, is that it can actually help with your grades.  *gasp*  Really?!  You have to be kidding me.  Nope, I am serious.  When you think about it this really does make sense.  Since most of your friends that you make are going to be in classes and most likely have the same major, at least have a minor in the field you are studying, you will most likely call them for help if you cannot get a hold of your professors.  Also, who are you going to ask to be in your study groups?  Your friends.  Most of the time my friends and I had study groups at either a coffee shop, the library, or a restaurant of some kind.  Usually a pizza place or a place that was open 24/7 because we sometimes stayed there until about 2 or 3 in the morning.  If it was a coffee shop it was either a Starbucks or one of the local coffee shops that actually liked having college students there.  Your friends can also help you get over your nervousness about presenting a paper because you can read it allowed to them.  Just be sure to tell them to correct you if they find something wrong with it.  They are your friends they are not going to criticize you just for laughs.  When you actually study you tend to do better in your classes.  Just saying.  I mean some of the classes that I took at university I could not have made it through had it not been for my friends.

To sum things up since this post was really long, making friends and being social has a lot of perks in terms of your happiness, health, employment, and your grades.  Friends can help you out of a lot of sticky situations.  Just remember, that lovely quote by the wonderful C.S. Lewis.

 

It is true!  If you never go out and make friends you will never experience that wonderful feeling.  I had that moment when I met my friend Andrew's wife, at the time she was not his wife.  Her name is Rosemary.  Those two are probably some of my closest friends.  I have known Andrew since I was in junior high.  At that time I had not met another girl that had quite the same interests in games and crafts as I did.  Also, I have not met another person who eats eggs and hash browns the same way and loves rubber ducks as much as I do except Rosemary.

 

So, go out and make friends!  Be social!  I promise it will not be the end of the world if you do.  Believe me.  I am very introverted and it takes me a while to make friends and start being more talkative around people even today.  However, going out and making new friends has really made me more of an upbeat person that gets along with a wider range of people.  That has helped me out a lot.

 

In closing I would love to say THANK YOU to all of my friends!  I adore each and every one of you and you mean the world to me.