My Paternal Grandfather – World War II

Isn’t he good looking!!?

I don’t know that much about my ancestors even though I have a 14 page detailed PDF of my family tree that was created by my friend, Jason. It gets more confusing as I read it. I go from my parents to my 13th generation who is Ole Reitan!

But I do have an interesting story to tell…

My great-grandfather bought a ticket to go on the Titanic at the age of 20. He supposedly sold his ticket to someone else and went on the Mauretania a month later. He left his Mom behind in Norway and moved to South Dakota once he arrived Ellis Island with only $20. I’m even surprised he managed to still get on a different ship 1 month after the Titanic sunk.

If my great-grandfather went on the Titanic, you wouldn’t be reading this blog. I wouldn’t be alive! I know not everyone died on the Titanic but he would have been in the lower class and probably would have not made it out alive. It’s mind-boggling just thinking about how life would be so different if my great-grandfather died.

Just the other day, I decided to google my Great-Grandfather’s name out of curiosity and I came across a blog which turns out to be my paternal grandfather’s brother’s son’s wife’s blog (whew..I think I confused you all). In other terms.. my dad’s cousin’s wife’s blog. My grandpa came from a family of 10 children so this explains why my Dad has so many cousins! After a few exchanged emails and adding each other on Facebook, it turns out I have seven 3rd cousins now!  We could say this is a success story for Google. I’m so excited to have found a family that’s related to us.

Do you have an interesting story about your ancestors?

I was looking through old pictures on my computer. I know for sure I have gone through a lot of different phases with hair styles and clothes. Duh…who hasn’t!? For a while in middle high school I had low self esteem and always had to wear a long t-shirt that covered my booty. I’m so glad I outgrew this phase quickly!

I had a friend, Katie, who lived across the street that was 5 years older than me. I remember the day when she came over and tried getting me to wear my jeans low past my belly button because it was the new trend. Remember those days where we had to make sure our hair was perfect when putting it up. Katie told me to trust her and put my hair up in a messy bun. I remember cringing at the feeling of my jeans being too low and my messy bun style hair! It was a torture at first to get used to. (Thanks for all the advices & fashion help, Katie!)

2000 – Haley and me

One of those fun nights we had playing dress up especially for spirit week at school.
This was the era of bangs for me.
Blow drying it with a round brush every single morning!

2003 – Senior Picture

My hair looks ORANGE! This is one of those times when I bleached my hair.
I can’t believe I had twisted my hair on the top for my senior pictures.

Overalls, don’t you miss those? and how it was so cool leaving one strap off.

The beanie hat phase in college. A few of us bought the same hat and wore it all the time.
We even took “we’re too cool for you” pictures. Pfft!

Click on the image to see a short GIF animated video I created years ago

Transcript of video:

Me: My shaw (HOT) boyfriend!

‘Shaw’ is one of the many words we made up in high school. I never use that sign anymore. Did you see the necklace Tyler’s wearing in the video? and his earrings? Tyler stopped wearing them since he got a job. Thank god! I can’t imagine him wearing them again… I think he moved on.

Now I’m sure years later from now we’ll be laughing at the clothes we’re wearing now and the hair styles too!!

Exactly 4 years ago we were living in freezing Rochester (NY) where we both attended RIT. We lived together with a roommate in an apartment only a few miles away from campus.

I was on campus in the computer lab working on a project. A few hours later I decided to take a break because I couldn’t really receive text messages in the lab since RIT is a brick school! I checked my phone and received messages from Tyler and our roommate that said something brief like,

“The ceiling in our apartment fell through!”

I had no idea what to expect or think since they both were not responding back to my messages. I quickly got my things together and left. That was the longest 4 minutes drive home… unsure of what to expect or think. Is the old lady downstairs okay? Are our things okay?! Every possible thing was running through my head about what could have happened. I arrived and left everything in the car and walked up to the door and saw this…

Then I walked up and saw all the damage to our things…

(and that’s not snow – that’s wall insulation)

It turns out that the pipes were frozen and burst. Luckily for us, our roommate was home when it happened and had to call the office to have them shut off the water. The smell was so bad! The management crew did a horrible job handling the job. They didn’t leave a drying fan to absorb water from the carpet. They left us with a hole in the ceiling for days until they fixed it. And it took them weeks to replace the carpet.

This isn’t the first time I had my fair share of home disasters though. When I was younger we lived in Seattle and there was a really bad thunderstorm one day when I was at school. I thought it was an awesome day at first since the power was out and we were all playing games in the dark in our classrooms. I clearly remember the principal coming to my classroom and pulling me aside to tell me that my grandparents were on the way to pick me up because a huge tree fell on our house. I didn’t think anything too serious about it. I never really thought about asking my parents where exactly it had done damages to. I remember driving home with my parents and seeing that the impact was MY BEDROOM! There was a long branch poking down on my bed. For days after that I refused to sleep in my own room.

Have you ever experienced any house disasters like this or worse!? Do share!