Geneology and Family Tree

At the end of 2007, a friend turned Monica and I on to Geni, where you can create a family tree and make all of your relatives members and then can add to the tree and add their relatives and so on and so on. Essentially it's viral* family tree.

Monica and I each had family trees that were put together from our father's sides and were able to add a lot of relative beyond what we might know off the top of our heads. Then my parents both got involved and talked to my grandmother and filled out as much of their families as they knew. And slowly we're adding some (geographically) distant cousins who are adding their families. And we're searching on the internet to see if we can find people.

One of the neatest parts of searching for information was having my mom go through her old records and searching the Ellis Island records and finding the official records where my grandmother (mom's mother) and her brother and parents came to the United States. It's also somewhat surprising to find information that conflicts.

I hope as time goes by other members add to the tree. Anyone who is married into the family has a whole tree to add. And I'm going to start searching Facebook to find many of my third cousins who I don't know at all.

If you're in my family, let me know and I can give you access to the tree. Or think about starting your own family tree.

Happy New Year

Best wishes for a terrific 2008. Maybe this will be the year Monica blogs.

I sent our New Year's letter out this AM so you know what we've been up to. If you didn't get it let me know.

I'm already off to a good start, completing a couple of small projects around the house and having a winning day in poker.

My latest project is working on our family tree on Geni. More on that later.