McConaughy 80th Birthday

80 years of Kenneth McConaughy!

We love you Grandpa!

Kissing Grandparents

It's nice to know that my great grandparents still loved each other into old age.  And weren't embarrassed to show it.  Pictures like this make me even happier to be part of this family.

Uncle Larry teaches me to stick out my tongue?

Okay, so either Uncle Larry taught me to stick out my tongue at that time or it is hereditary.  I have stuck out my tongue when I'm thinking my entire life; as evidenced by this picture.  So, Larry, did you teach me this embarrassing habit or was I born with it?

Some pages from Grandma Jean's high school autograph book...

The first one is from her high school sweetheart and my grandpa.  When questioned he couldn't remember what "Amote" meant but after some research I found that it was latin and meant a very stong love (like a punch to the chest).  Strong feelings grandpa.  The next one is from grandma's cousin Donna, who became my grandma several years after my grandma Jean died.  And the last autograph is by my grandma herself.  I never realized what a sense of humor my grandma had.  She was a popular girl at her very small school and she stayed popular throughout her life.  I would contribute that to the fact that she was genuinely interested in people.

4 Generation Pictures

The McConaughy side of my family has a tradition of taking 4 generation pictures.  I love these and I am blessed to take part in this tradition.

Hannah Ward, Rosanna Gotcher Ward(me), Karen McConaughy Gotcher, Ken McConaughy

Rosanna Gotcher, Karen McConaughy Gotcher, Ken McConaughy, Eva Parmenter McConaughy

Karen McConaughy, Jean Siefken McConaughy, Beryl Richert Siefken, George Richert

Karen McConaughy, Jean Siefken McConaughy, Herman Siefken, Louisa Schael Siefken Clodt

Doris Siefken Pieper(Jean's older sister), Herman Siefken, Louisa Schael Siefken Clodt, Amelia Beardenburg Schael

Grandpa and Grandma McConaughy Farmhouse

    When I was young I dearly loved this house.  I can remember so much about it.  I remember the memories attached to each room and every smell.  In my mind, It was the perfect home.  When I was really young my grandparents lived upstairs and Florence (the owner) lived downstairs.  I loved Florence like she was another grandmother.  It was her, I think, that first nourished my love of reading.  The upstairs had a living room, 2 bedrooms, a pass through bedroom (hall with a bed), a closed in porch that doubled for a bedroom for a time, a bathroom and a HUGE kitchen with a large walk in pantry.  My brother and I loved to play in the pantry on an old metal cash register.  Every Saturday night the family tradition was to get together in that kitchen and make and eat pizza.  What great memories I have of those times.  We usually got to sleep in the hall bed (a bunk built into the wall over the stairs) whenever we visited; which meant that we could hear everything going on around us.  Years later, after Florence died, the family inherited the farmhouse and moved downstairs.  My favorite room downstairs was the round sunroom.  It was, of course, sunny, and the games and puzzles were out there. 

     There were two sets of stairs.  One from the front door that was always kind of scary for me when I was young as it was open on one side.  The other stairs were off the living room and came up under the hall bed.  We loved to play on these stairs.  My brother came flying down the stairs once and missed some steps and landed flat on his back.  He knocked the air out of his lungs and didn’t take a breath for so long my dad was about to panic and was ready to head to the hospital.  Outside the house there was a play house that we turned into a drive thru restaurant, a grocery store, a house, a school, etc...  There was also a treehouse overlooking the pigpen.  The best thing about playing outside was when grandpa let us drive the lawnmower and we drove all over the farm.  We also liked to play in the barn -  we were city kids for the most part and the barn fascinated us.

    There was one year when I was in the third grade that we actually lived within a mile of my grandparents.  We got to spend a lot of time at the farm.  And to this day I tell people that was my favorite childhood year and my favorite place to live. 

The Salute to the Flag?

When I first saw this picture I was like, “What the heck are those kids doing?”  The picture is one that was found in my Grandmother Mabel’s  photos, unlabeled.   She took many pictures of her students when she was a teacher.  This was outside a one-room schoolhouse in the mid-1930s in York County, Nebraska.  After doing a little bit of internet research about why these kids might be “Heil Hitlering” the U.S. Flag, I found out that that was actually the way we Americans did it in the beginning.  After Hitler and WWII we changed our salute to the one hand over the heart salute so as to disassociate from the whole nazi image.  I also found that the man who wrote our Pledge of Allegiance was a nationalist socialist - Hitler and he might have been compatriots.  Which gives me a whole new outlook on the whole pledge thing.  In fact, the “Under God”, part wasn’t added until the late 50s.  As a conservative Christian, I find it amazing that I never knew that something I thought was so great growing up was actually part of a socialist agenda.  Who knew?