Last year in my blog of April 16, 2010 I wrote: “Glad I wasn’t in pioneer times this week. Last Saturday I was walking through the pasture looking for some wild yarrow plants to dig up and plant in my flower beds.
I caught my foot in a badger hole that I didn’t see and all of a sudden I was face down in the grass.

Rats. By the time I sat up and got my shoe off, my ankle was swollen and turning as lavender as the darkest lilacs.
Thank goodness for a cell phone (to get me out of the pasture), X-rays (to show I didn’t break any bones) and crutches (to move around this week).”

April 22, 2011: Now a year later I’ve still been having problems with my left foot so had surgery this week to repair tendons torn in my fall a year ago.

Most of this week I’ve ignored the computer and spent my days with  my foot elevated in bed, moving around on crutches again, and enjoying naps (due to pain pills), reading romance novels and savoring chocolate (when awake).

Once again I’m glad I’m not a pioneer this week and had the option to repair my foot!

I often heard my father or his brothers say “Tack så mycket” when we left through the back door of my grandparent’s house after we’d stopped in for a visit. And Grandma would answer back “Var så god.” Their custom of saying thanks, and you’re welcome.

April 1, 1981 was the day my grandparent’s house and household items were sold. They had moved into a nursing home and what was left behind was sold at auction.

Back then, my husband and I lived in Nebraska, and I drove home for the sale. Already married five years, we had a house and didn’t need a bed or dining room set, but I did buy an old stained brown wooden chair that had set on their back porch, and the old white painted chair that sat in their bathroom.

This morning I sat in the white chair—now setting in my kitchen— to put on my shoes, and realized it’s already been thirty years since I brought this chair home.

Who else sat in this chair, besides my grandparents and family? Was it handed down through the family when they married in 1918 and needed furniture? Or bought at an auction like how I had acquired it?

I’ll never know, but as I mentally think “Tack så mycket for the chair, Grandma,” I can hear her Swedish voice say, “Var så god.”

I’ve seen very few photos of my great-great grandparents and their children while the family was young, but then due to the times and expense, photos just weren’t taken.

Yesterday I showed you a photo of their house with a little explanation of why that picture was taken. I’m guessing the photos of the children in their caskets were the only ones ever taken of those two.  

There are also photos of their other children in the old album book too, so the Johnson’s took advantage of having the photographer out and took pictures of everyone. Charlotta had already lost two other children in 1870, and I’m sure she wished she had a photo for their memories too.

Here’s a photo of little Esther I featured in Cultivating Hope. She would have been five years old then. Look at the little dress and boots. All dressed up—for the photographer and the funeral…

One of the major questions I’m trying to answer for the Kansas Quilter series, is when Kizzie and her family were living in the Oklahoma Territory.

Great Uncle Ralph’s version is that three of the Pieratt brothers decided to go on the Oklahoma Land Rush and stayed down there for a while before moving back to Kansas. But of course, I’m trying to decide which one of the territory openings, and was it during for land rush, or later for a land lottery.

Kizzie had her first four children in the first five years of their marriage, between 1894 and 1899. Then it was another five years before, Mildred, her fifth child was born on March 11, 1904—107 years ago today.  No other children were born until daughter Birdine in 1909, when the family was already back in Kansas. (I haven’t had much luck finding school records in either place, but I’m guessing Kizzie’s family was there between 1903 and 1907.)

Another fun thing to find is a few photos when Mildred was a baby. (She is in Ira’s arms on the right side of the photo.) I can identify everyone. Some we know lived in Oklahoma and some in Kansas, so apparently the Kansas relation came down for a visit.

If only photos can talk— or if this was a video instead. I’d love to hear the conversations of the parents getting all those boys sitting still long enough for a photo on that porch.

Anyway, I’m having fun looking a photos and thinking of great aunt Mildred today on her birthday.

Finally getting some good sunny weather today after two days of clouds and rain. Now it feels like spring in on its way. Gray Cat is enjoying the sun too- moving to a new spot every time the sun changes its angle coming through the window.

Today’s project is setting up a Goodreads account to showcase my books and to list some other authors that I have read. (And of course it connects up to Facebook too.) I also plan to finish submitting my ebooks to Kobobooks and check in with the marketing on other site too.

Marketing takes more time than writing a book in the first place- but is needed so readers can find and enjoy my books. (I’d appreciate it if you’d pass on my blog along with links to my books to your friends too.)

I wonder what my great grandmother Kizzie had planned for today in 1911? I’m sure she had a standard routine with feeding her large family and taking care of her farm. But I hope she had a little time to enjoy reading today too.

I actually started my Kansas Quilter book series back in 2002, but finally shelved it in 2005 when agri-tourism took over our Bison Farm.  I didn’t have the dedicated blocks of time to work on it anymore.

Now that we’ve retired from our farm business, I’m going back over research notes and already written chapters to pick up the series again.

And I’m also looking for information that wasn’t available before online. Like census records. Instead of going to a physical place to actually see the written pages, I can put in the name, state, choose the year of the census I want —and voila— the actual page pops up on the screen in its original handwritten form. It so cool to see who was in the family at the time, and it even lists anyone that is working for them too.

Pieratt family- 1900 Kansas census

Of course some information is easy to find, and other questions I have will never be answered. I guess that’s where the fiction part of my writing fills in the gaps.

I’m also working on the list of family members that will be my main characters, their conflicts, plot, etc. Kizzie will be the “heroine” of sorts, telling the early history of her part of the Kansas prairie along with her family’s dreams. And quilts and quilting will be primary theme for this Kansas pioneer.

I’m sure every quilt Kizzie made had a story behind it…and I want to share it with you, my readers.