More Weekend Chatter

Another weekend is biting the dust for me. I know some people here in the US have tomorrow off for the President's Day holiday, but since next week is our winter school break, we don't have a long weekend this weekend. 4 days and counting!

So today was another gorgeous spring like day. We had all kinds of melt.

I love the reflection of the trees in this little mud puddle in the driveway.

My road is just a GIANT mud puddle. The snow looks sooooo dirty and yuk! Hopefully with the whole week being on the warm side we'll get a lot of melt.

I won't miss all this snow. :)

So I had a long list of things I wanted to do today, one of which was packing for my trip. I had this vision in my mind of my suitcase getting basically organized and together, and I did start working on it, but right now my suitcase is buried under a pile of "things", and its more like a disaster mound on my bedroom floor. :) That's about all that got done on my list, but I did enjoy the nice weather and did a bit of reading of my latest book too.

I've been biology brain geeking out lately.  Awhile back I got my own DNA ethnicity results back. I had some doubts about submitting my DNA, but my curiosity got the better of me, so my hubby gave me the test kit for Christmas.

I had a couple of friends who did theirs and had some real big surprises. 

What I find  amazing is that Ancestry (the test company I used), who really knew nothing about me, sent me these DNA results that matched what I knew about my heritage, with just a couple of surprises. Any doubts I had about how much my DNA could really tell me about my family tree and history were definitely erased. 

What amazed me even more is the list of people they connected me to who have also had their DNA tested and with whom I might be related. Now I haven't really started any genealogical research (but that will be coming), and I haven't contacted these people, but some of the names matched that of my maternal great-grandmother's family. They said a few of these people might be 3rd-4th cousins, and I do plan on finding that out once I get some time to sit down and do the research. There is also someone who they said could be my second cousin-hmmm, that has really peaked my curiosity. There were also a few people with my maiden name that they said were 5th-6th cousins, and even one listed with my married name. I would laugh if one reason I am a kidney match to my husband is that we are distant distant cousins. The scary part, is we both have distant relatives from the same general area in Finland going back past our great grandparents.

I'm sure I'll have more to share with you once I get more into my search.

Now my ethnicity does make sense but has left me with some surprises. I came back almost 60% Scandinavian, which is no surprise since 3 of my grandparents were Swedish immigrants here to the US. And I came back over 30% Eastern European, which also makes biological  sense because my maternal grandmother's family was/is Polish. And then I came back 4% Finnish/Northern Russian which also makes sense because one of my Swedish grandparents family still does live in an area of Finland with lots of Swedish heritaged people. Then there was my 2 % British, which did surprise me, but makes sense because of all the travel that took place between the British Isles, Iceland, and Scandinavia over the last 1000 years. And finally, I came back 2% Eastern European Jewish. Again makes sense with part of the family coming from Poland. But who knew? 

Its really fascinating stuff.

OK, and I'm finally getting to my art for today. Its the inside cover of my travel journal

I'm linking it up to Try It on Tuesday. The  challenge is  Messy, and I think my background collaging could be called that. 

I made it with some images stamped on tissue paper, some die cut sun symbols and a little bit of collaging to finish it off.

Hope you have a great new week.