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.

Charlotte Goes Home

Our latest foster dog Charlotte is going home today after 7 months of being a guest in our house. She's gotten along great with Hunny Bear, Cocoa, and Jasmine. We'll miss her a lot -- Monica a lot more than me cuz she bounds too much with foster dogs -- but are thrilled that she's found a great forever home.

She's also improved her condition tremendously while she's been here as you can see in these photos. No camera tricks here. When she came to Beagle Rescue she was 53 pounds and at her most recent vet exam she was down to an almost svelte 36 pounds. She could still stand to loose a few pounds -- couldn't we all after Thanksgiving -- but she's no longer horribly obese. She loves playing and going for a walk, both of which have helped her trim down.



Here's one more set of before and after photos.

Return to normalcy

Well, sort of. Our hardwoods are in and dry. Our rugs are down and our furniture is out of storage. The real work is done. See photos at the link in the previous post.

We still need to move everything back into the buffet, china cabinet, and baker's rack. And of course a few things were damaged in the move and will need to be replaced. And there are a couple of little fixes with the hardwood install.

But at least it feels like a house again. Let us know if/when you'd like to come over and see the finished results.

More remodelling

Our final (I hope) major remodel project, replacing our crapets (sic) with hardwood floors, officially started on Friday. Unofficially the project started a couple weeks before as we started emptying out the rooms so they could pull up the carpets.

After 3+ years here, our carpets are horribly (and embarrassingly) urine stained from dogs -- mainly foster dogs and guests but our dogs aren't perfect either. And if you don't clean (or notice) a stain right away, you can never get it out. So we're ripping out the carpets in our dining room, living room, and piano room and installing hardwood floors. We're also refinishing the hardwood floors in the rest of downstairs to match.

I've started a photo album on snapfish to track the progress. So far all you can see is what's been ripped up. Have to get better to get worse, right?