The Extraordinary Renaud Family

Hey, family history buffs and amateur genealogists in St. Louis County!

Get out your library card, and check out an awesome new resource:

ProQuest's Historical St. Louis Post-Dispatch database

It includes searchable full text and full image articles from 1874 - 1922, though there are some gaps.

This is just one of many helpful databases you can search from the St. Louis County Library's genealogy databases page. All of these databases are free, but some (like Ancestry.com or Footnote.com) require you to search from within a library branch. But this Post-Dispatch database can be searched from home!

A couple years ago, one of our neighbors gave us her old Fischer-Price Molly cow, much like the one in the photo above.

We tied some yarn to its neck so Jadzia could pull it around. After a while she began to call the cow her "Lassie" (the dog from the TV show). She would lose and regain interest in it over time.

Recently we watched the Wizard of Oz twice with Jadzia and Ludi. Ludi seems to have been especially captivated by it. She asks me daily (or more than once a day) to recount the story for her. I tell various versions, depending on how much time I feel like spending sitting down and talking.

And lately Ludi has begun taking the cow and calling it "Toto." She, of course, is Dorothy. (Sometimes Josie is the Wicked Witch of the West.)

So Molly the Cow has become a stand-in for famous TV and movie dogs.

It's no secret that the Renaud Empire is a thrifty state.

So, while we are lovers of technology, we have never ponied up for cable, high-speed internet access, or cell phones. There doesn't seem to be enough competition among service providers in those areas; consequently, prices stay high.

Josie turned one year old on Jan. 14. We had a nice little party with the girls and their Nanny. Yoli made homemade pizza, which was awesome. Josie got a kick out of it, and she wasn't shy about wolfing down the birthday cake, either.

Keep reading to see some photos from the festivities (and to learn about the bald-day).

Working at a newspaper is still an exciting thing to do, even if the future of the industry looks dim.

In the last week, I have had to work during two big breaking news stories. The first was the horrible shooting at ABB in St. Louis. The second was McGwire's admission yesterday that he took steroids.

My job each time was to design informative, compelling pages. In such situations, there is a lot of collaborative work with my bosses and other designers. Also, important editors are frequently looking over your shoulder. Deadline looms.

It's an environment I still enjoy and still thrive in. Here's to hoping that newspapers survive their current morass so they can continue informing the public and serving as a check against abuses by governments or businesses.

Also, check out the Post-Dispatch's work on the McGwire confession on the SportsDesigner blog

We've been tired lately, Yoli especially. Mostly it's Josie who wakes up early and such.

But Ludi has also been waking up in the night. Sometimes it's just that she doesn't want to go to sleep, so we have issues with her getting out of her bed.

A couple nights ago, I came home and found Ludi sleeping on the couch. She had snuck out of her room while Yoli was washing dishes, and fell asleep there. Last night, Yoli heard her crying in the night. She was on the potty!

We are very thankful for that latter development!

In any event, these girls wear us out.

Advertising often sticks with us in powerful ways, whether we want it to or not.

I have always had a mind for jingles, and I can remember a lot of old commercials and songs. But it has always struck me as peculiar that I could remember a jingle for the Dallas Times-Herald.

This Christmas was a lot of fun. Perhaps the best part was having my Nan in town all week, and my brother's family for several days. We went over to my mom's house daily to hang out.

Of all the gifts the girls received this week, this one gave us the biggest laugh. It's a ladybug toy for Josie:

As Yoli removed it from its packaging today, she found the following warning:

Caution: Please be safe. Always select the correct size toy for the type of breed and chewing habits of your dog. Should any portion of this toy break or tear, please remove from your dog and discard immediately. Vo-Toys, Inc. is not responsible for any pet owner's neglect or misuse of this toy.

In recent years I have twice written up a stack of Christmas cards with every intention of mailing them. I even got them into the envelopes and somewhat addressed. Then some thing(s) or other cropped up and I procrastinated to the point that I thought "well, it's too late to mail them now!"

It's embarrasing. (Well, I guess it's only embarrasing now that I've mentioned it here on the blog. Before that, nobody really knew about it!)

But this year, I did put together a little Renaud family letter for Christmas, and I have managed to get most of them into the mail. I have one left, and it will hit the post office sometime tomorrow.

Of course this whole endeavor is a bit pricey, with the cost of having the letter printed and folded, stamps, and all.

To cut costs, I ended up printing in black and white. Also I decided I will send a digitial PDF of the letter via email to many folks.

Maybe that's the way to go in the future. It sure is easier to do. But then again, there's something nice about getting a tangible letter with a little handwritten note (even if it's just a short note).

We took two unplanned trips to Hermann, Mo. this week in search of Springerle cookie molds. Hermann is a wonderful old city on the banks of the Missouri River founded by German immigrants.

So the Post-Dispatch recently published a story about Springerle cookies.

I pointed it out to Yoli because I knew she would be interested. How right I was!

The first thing that caught my attention was the recipe's use of "hartshorn," which is actually baking ammonia. This is an ingredient that is not cheap or available in every store.

We happen to have some that we bought in Bolivia, because Yoli has some recipes that call for it. Let me tell you, when you bake with ammonia, it will stink up the house. But once the smell dissipates, the cookies or whatever taste great.

Yoli was excited to try the Springerle recipe, but the problem is molds. There is a local artist who hand-carves them. His carvings are amazing, but at $20-30 bucks a pop, it's a more expensive way to get started than we would like. We are hoping to find used ones at a thrift store or maybe some resin copies ... something more affordable.

We did actually come across two Springerle "boards" at 309 Antiques here in Ferguson, but they are $50 each. Apparently, many folks collect these hand-carved molds. Yoli just wants to bake with them.

Anyhow, anyone out there have any local Springerle resources?

Today I decided to try and help the girls make up their own stories and write them down. Here are the first fruits of this labor. The following stories are by Jadzia, with some prodding by me.

So Google just informed me that I have eight invites available for Google Wave. If you haven't heard of it, Wave is a collaborative tool that sort of takes the best of email, IM, chat, and other technologies and rolls them together into something seamless and perhaps better. It's worth checking out.

I'll send invites to the first eight people to comment on this entry. Be sure to use your real email address when you post your comment, otherwise you won't receive your invite.

BTW - If any of you already use Google Wave, add me to your contacts there: kirkman14@googlewave.com

We interrupt your regularly-scheduled afternoon tea to bring you important updates on the status of the Renaud Empire.

While other nations continue to struggle with job losses and brain drain, the Renaud Empire is pleased to report that all its citizens are fully employed:

• Josh: Emperor, dad, newspaper designer
• Yoli: Empress, mom, librarian
• Jadzia: Princess No. 1, pretender
• Ludi: Princess No. 2, player
• Josie: Princess No. 3, wake-up-in-the-night-cryinger

Additionally, there has been no brain drain. Our heads of state today celebrate six years of holy matrimony, so neither is going anywhere anytime soon. The rest of the population is happily employed (and unable to drive, and therefore leave). But we are not content to stand pat. If we are to achieve global domination, our population must increase.

And so it is that we are pleased to make this public proclamation: We are expecting our fourth child, who will be born in April!

I was recently made aware of a problem with user registration. In short, people who wanted to create a "Movable Type" account (which I recommend), were unable to do so. This issue is now resolved.

So please -- register and post as many comments as you'd like!

(P.S. You can also use your login from other services like Google or Yahoo, if you prefer)

Today, Yoli's Tio Adonai died.

Though he had been struggling with some health problems for a long time, this turn for the worse happened very suddenly. We had just begun talking about how it might be possible to go down to Bolivia sooner than planned in order to see him.

But it wasn't to be. God took him home early.

Unfortunately, it seems certain Yoli will not travel to Bolivia. His burial will take place tomorrow. Deaths and burials are not handled the same down there as they are here. When someone dies, they don't wait around -- mostly because they aren't able to. It's a tropical climate and almost summertime right now.

Tio Adonai was a very special man, and it's almost too sad for me to even write. We will miss him. We are sorry he didn't have the chance to meet Josie.

If you have time, please pray for Yoli's family, and especially Adonai's wife Miriam. This is a devastating loss.

Speaking of recipes, Yoli has some recipes she's been saving for almost 20 years. Many of them are hand-written or cut-and-pasted into a little notebook.

Last night she decided to try a recipe that she had wanted to make for a long time. The recipe was written in Portugese, and it was called "Torta de Chocolate," although it really looked more like a pie than a cake. She had found the recipe on the street back in Bolivia and had always wondered how it might taste. Now was her chance to find out.

(And yes, Yoli knows enough Portugese to be able to prepare this recipe)

But there are always some monkeys to throw wrenches into things. In this case, the monkeys were named Jadzia, Ludi, and Josie.

All the girls wanted to be in the kitchen watching Yoli as she cooked. Ludi was standing on our step ladder, Jadzia brought in a stepstool from the bathroom, and Josie was just crawling and doing whatever.

When Yoli went to fetch a pan from the basement, Ludi sprang into action. She took Yoli's good vanilla, and poured all of it into the mixture for the torta's filling. The cap fell to the floor, where Josie eagerly picked it up and began licking it. Jadzia the eager spectator didn't bother to call for help.

Suffice it to say that Yoli threw all three out of the kitchen, cleaned the mess, and continued cooking.

I got to taste the torta last night. It was very mousse-pie-like, but the crust was like a very firm cake rather than a pie crust. Very tasty, but it had enough vanilla flavor that it almost had an alcohol taste.

Jadzia has begun inventing recipes that she wants us to try. Here is one she described today, called "Milk pudding":

Water
Canela (cinnamon)
1 egg

Mix them all, then put them in the oven.

Reason #82 I don't want kids to grow up:
In their eyes, my "dancing" is on par with Baryshnikov's.

Reason #139 I want the kids to grow up:
The Terrible Twos have arrived for Ludi.

So, I hit a milestone 10 days ago: the big three-oh. Haven't really noticed anything different, other than my brother Justin referring to me as "old man" on the phone today. (But then I am still called "young Josh" by at least one coworker)