Feeling // Exhausted after an epically long (literally) day at work yesterday and an epically long (figuratively) several weeks in general. The next week and a half will be similarly packed so I’m going to concentrate on a whole of lot relaxing in the evenings and a whole lot of going to bed early when I can.
But! Despite this rough patch I am feeling super optimistic about the possibility of good things in my future, work-wise. So there’s that!
Smiling // At the adorableness that is a toddler dance class. (Emma’s the tallest kid. Sheesh.)
Eating // Key lime pie…made with avocado. This month’s recipe club theme was “juxtaposition” and while the potential was high for us to end up with a lot of weird-tasting stuff, it was actually one of the better ones in recent memory! Jose and I had a key lime avocado pie in Hawaii a few years ago, and although that one was better, this one that I made wasn’t bad. (I used honey instead of agave nectar.)
Enjoying // Photos from Jose’s iPhone. He gets some good shots that I never see unless I think to ask him! I should see if he’d be ok with putting Dropbox on his phone so I can get them from time to time. The photo above is Emma and me at the airport (obviously) as we were waiting to board our plane to Charlotte back in December.
Exploring // My family tree. Last month Jose decided to take advantage of a holiday sale and sent a DNA sample off to AncestryDNA to find out what his ethnic make-up is. He got his results recently and it was so interesting! I haven’t done mine yet, but it did send me off down the rabbit hole of a 2-week free trial on ancestry.com. I’ve found draft cards for my grandfathers and great-grandfathers, plenty of marriage and census records, and other assorted info. (I’m still working on confirming a link to George Washington reflected on a family tree my cousin did ~25 years ago.) In any case, I’ve been having a surprising amount of fun.
Drinking // The new Starbucks tiramisu latte. Because you know I try all their new ones! I don’t know if it’s significantly different than a few of their other flavors, but it was pretty good.
Do you have iPhones? If so, you can use airdrop to transfer photos from one to another. It’s pretty awesome, especially when we are on vacation.
My aunt has done a lot on ancestry.com. I’m intrigued about the DNA test. How did Jose have that done?
He did it through ancestry.com, it’s called AncestryDNA. The test is normally $100, but it was on sale for $80 when he bought it, and it traces your DNA back to various regions like native American, different parts of Europe, Asia, Africa, etc. (Jose was primarily Iberian and native American as expected, but also had some Irish and Middle Eastern!)
Anyway, they send you a vial, you fill it with a tablespoon or so of your spit, then send it back. It took about a month to get his results. I thought his was so cool that I actually ordered one for me, even though I’m pretty sure mine will be heavily British. We’ll see!
Interesting DNA thing. I presume you get a report back? Is it pretty short or extensive?
I’m not surprised about the Middle Eastern.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umayyad_conquest_of_Hispania
You do indeed get a report. Jose could tell you how extensive. I don’t think it’s super detailed, but it does give you percentages + error bands, and some history of how people migrated and thus how your ancestry may have shifted around the world.
And yeah, the Middle Eastern probably isn’t a surprise given the history there.
I’d love to hear more of what you learn about our family history and also the DNA test!
One of my coworkers is interested in genealogy and he showed me how to find census records of your family. I found Grandmother Saunders’ family in the 1920 census. 🙂 The census only unseals records after 70 years or something, but it was pretty cool to find them.
I’ll definitely send you guys what I find. I’m going to do the DNA test too — ours would be pretty similar obviously, although the percentages of different ethic backgrounds can change among siblings.