The reason a lot of people do not recognize opportunity is because it usually goes around wearing overalls looking like hard work.
--Thomas A. Edison
For some reason, I made the naive decision to put together family tree information for Flannaberry for her baby book. I was thinking I would go back maybe 6 generations and draw it on a little chart like the cute tree you see in the photo. And then tuck the cute family tree into her baby book for posterity.
What I didn't expect was that I would be given tons of information on my family (and my husband's) dating back to the 1700s.
Yup, the 1700's.
So my little family tree chart might be expanding just a weeee bit.
Because I just can't take all this information that my mom and dad and my husband's grandmother have given me and just tuck it away in a file somewhere. All the lists of names and dates look like a bunch of hard work right now, but I'm trying to see them as an opportunity. (Thanks, Edison, for being so spot on in your advice.)
So, I've started entering all of our data into Ancestry.com's cool website. It's so easy that I'm really getting sucked in. I promise I won't become a genealogy freak, but seriously, I love all of the cool family names I'm discovering like Sultanah, Stony, Zella, & Silas. And I also love reading the little notes my dad took in the margins of the papers my parents sent me, and learning things like the fact that Robi's grandmother is 2 years 2 months 2 days older than her brother, who is 2 years 2 months 2 days older than their other sister. See, cool, right?
But goodness gracious, it's a lot of work to organize 4 branches of a family tree!
I'm throwing my overalls on and digging in, though. This really is an opportunity to bring my dad's hard work to fruition, and to be a storehouse of family memories for my daughter. So wish me luck as I roll up my sleeves!
Do you have any interesting branches in your family tree?
That's neat, TJ. I know both sides of my family traced back our lineage, but I haven't gotten into looking at it on my mom's side, and I wouldn't know whom to contact on my dad's (somewhat estranged).
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's hard to know where to look when family ties are tricky. But I think that's one of the cool things about using Ancestry.com. They'll give you hints and help you out based on what they have that matches your information in their database. Kinda neat! Thanks for checking out my blog...I know you're busy with your 60in60 work...and I'm enjoying that, too!
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