• Genealogy Research -- so far Dennis is the main researcher of our family histories (but Holly is also getting more involved).
  • CENSUS PROJECT -- to "give back" to the friendly and helpful genealogical community, in 1999 Dennis volunteered to transcribe the 1850 US Census for Benton Co, Missouri which at that time had a population of about 4555 people. You can also browse the USGenWeb Census Transcription Assignment chart to see what other censuses are online so far. The USGenWeb Census Project hopes someday to have them all on-line.
  • MARRIAGE RECORDS -- In the year 2000 Dennis also volunteered to transcribe Marriage Records for Clay Co, Texas where his great-grandparents Miller/Ford were married. He transcribed the years 1887 thru 1900 which included nearly 1300 marriages.
• WebPage -- Dennis is also the creator and maintainer of this website. But none of those fancy-schmancy webpage designer programs for him. Nosiree, Dennis does it all with WordPad and HTML (the fool !!).
• Remodeling -- We are mostly done with years of remodeling our house and Dennis is glad so he can spend more time on things he really enjoys (making music, vegetable gardening, computer and electronic projects, Bible study, writing articles on various topics, and doing new, interesting and/or fun things with the family).
• Property Investment and Management -- Both Dennis and Holly spent a bit of time in the year 2000 investigating and then purchasing several rental properties. We inherited a couple rotten tenants, but they have since moved out and now we think we have a great bunch of tenants. Being landlords has been interesting, new and fun for the most part. We call ourselves FairHavens Properties. Holly suggested the name FairHavens and said it came from the Bible. At first I didn't believe her but she was correct. Do you know where the name FairHavens appears in the Bible?

• Quilting -- Holly is quite the quilter. She learned a lot about the art from going to Mennonite quilting bees when we lived in PA. The old-timers were astonished at how fast she quilts, and without a thimble no less (Obviously Dennis is writing this -- Holly would never brag like that). Over the past 20 or so years she's worked on approximately 400 quilts herself, all hand-quilted of course, has taught quilting classes at fabric and hobby stores, and also does hand-quilting for hire. As recent as a couple years ago she hand-quilted about 5 to 10 quilts a year in her "spare" time on a rolling frame made by her father. She hasn't done much quilting lately, but if you need help with quilts, contact Holly.
• Gardening -- Holly is also quite the gardener, especially flowers. She creates and takes care of various gardens on our property including a perennial bed, shade garden, water garden, rose garden, dry creekbed garden, woodland garden, etc. A couple years ago she completed the Oregon State University Master Gardener program and sometimes volunteers at the agricultural extension service. Almost every time she goes to the gardening section at home improvement stores she gets offered a job because a customer will ask a question, and when the hired help shrugs their shoulders, then Holly gives the answer. She's a whiz, but enough of her husband's shameless accolades (and don't be surprised if Holly makes me take this stuff about her off the website!!).
• BSF -- Holly is also involved in BSF (Bible Study Fellowship), sometimes leading a group, sometimes not. This outfit meets weekly during the school year at hundreds if not thousands of locations all around the world to learn the Bible. The course material is around college-level, and Holly has definitely learned a lot and recommends BSF to anyone.
• Summary -- Quilts, flowers and the love of God. Everywhere Holly goes the world is a more beautiful place.

This space has for years been reserved for Isaac and Genevieve, if they ever got around to writing anything up for this website. But nope, they still haven't and so the job's left for me. I can tell you this much...Isaac and Genny have both taken classes at the local community college and Isaac also attended Eugene Bible College for a while. The future for both is still undecided except that both are seriously contemplating marriage. Both Isaac and Genny are pretty bright and excel at subjects like math. Both are also quite musical. Genny played alto sax for a couple years but decided she really likes piano best and is not afraid to sit down in front of some intimidating music (at least to me) and try to learn it. Similarly, Isaac is a talented flute player but decided he liked bass guitar better. At about age 15 he abducted his dad's bass guitar to play along with CDs in his room, but finally he got his own five-string bass and a sizeable amp. He quickly acquired the skill to play it quite well (far surpassing his dad) and has played in various bands (including church) and for a few CD projects as well.

When we first started our website, we used to have a dog and three birds.....and other animals too. But things change. Now we have four birds, two cats -- but alas, no more dog. Oops, that's no longer true either. Now we have two cats, one bird and one dog. No, make that one bird and one cat.

Our one bird is a canary. He belongs to Holly and especially likes to sing to loud music -- and also the vacuum cleaner. In older days Genny used to have three cockatiels but alas no more.

We've had several cats over the years but the first cat we ever got (about 10 years ago) was the most persistent one. Good ol' Mario (as in Andretti because of the black "racing stripes" on his otherwise white fur) finally gave up his ninth life last year. Our surviving cat is black with some white patches but the family can't seem to agree on a name so everybody calls him whatever they like. Hey, it's not like the cat cares... He mostly hangs around the back deck except when raccoons come to steal his food.

We used to have a small dog named Frisky, but she was pretty old and nearly deaf. It appears that she wandered onto the highway and never heard that logging truck coming. Then we got Genny (the real animal lover) a Pomeranian which she named Alfie. Eventually we gave Alfie to a family with some young children.

In the past we've also had a mouse, a horde of hamsters, some chickens (9 hens and 2 roosters of different varieties), a couple rabbits, a very old horse, and a couple lambs. We didn't keep the mouse very long because it stank too much. For awhile we also had a ferret but he also needed to use deodorant. We had the hamsters longer but pretty soon there were so many that we got rid of them before they took over the house. The horse and the lambs did not do too well, but the chickens amused us and gave lots of eggs (and even more fertilizer).