By The Sea

It is the new fad. Spit in a tube, send it to the lab and poof you have a list of countries your ancestors came from. I’ve fallen to the fad. I’ve spit into two different tubes, Ancestry and 23 and Me. I have my results form Ancestry already but I am still waiting on 23 and Me. It has been fun and exciting to see the migration of past relatives but nothing that truly surprised me. I am a little more mixed up than I originally thought but only in small amounts. This has fascinated my family so much that my three daughters, my husband and sister have recently spit into their tubes. I even had a cousin find a brother she didn’t know she had because of a connection with my DNA, talk about a BIG SURPRISE. Before I started all this DNA research, I visited the high school where my daughters attend. It was Special Friend Visitors Day and I was a guest for my daughter's classmate. She needed a special friend to attend classes with her and I was honored to be her special friend. As ...

Carina’s sophomore year in high school I picked my daughter up from school the other day. During the twenty-minute drive home she announced that she had finished her personal essay for English Class. Well, of course I was thrilled. She had a busy weekend ahead of her and she needed to finish all of her assignments before she went off to participate in a Lacrosse Camp. She asked me if I would like to hear what she wrote. I said of course as I drove her and my two other daughters home after a long day. It was dark out and I was prepared to listen but I was not prepared for what I actually heard.  I thought it would be another one of those English essays that she rushed through or did the bare minimum. I will admit to a time or two when I have told her, “That was horrible” or “I believe that was the worst paper you have ever written.” I have always known she was capable of more and I was always hoping she would discover that as well. As she read ...