The Necklace

Oh man... so much has happened in the past week. Just amazing. So where did I leave off? oh yes, we agreed to meet up with my dad on Friday night for dinner.

We sat down and we talked and ate and laughed. Very fun. After we left the restaurant we headed over to see his mom. I think she felt a little... whats the word... She seemed to be guarded with her emotions? She was very very nice but I'm sure she had to feel awkward and nervous. But she still gave me a hug. We talked a little bit and then moved into the dining room... she had six photo albums on the table. SIX! She was prepared show to the granddaughter she had yet to meet six photo albums. That is just amazing right there. And more proof that this woman interested in genealogy is related to me. I took photos of photos and notes. There was something else that was cool. Apparently my aunt made a family tree poster in college. Helloooo gold mine! Notes can get a little confusing so to have a visual tree... Just amazing. And I asked if I could take a picture of him and his mom. They agreed. I was to nervous/awkward to ask to be in a picture with either/both of them. Next time.

We didn't leave until around 11:30 at night. She hugged me again and stayed inside while the three of us went outside. We talked for a little bit. He asked what we were doing the rest of the weekend and I said we weren't sure... we were leaving Sunday morning and still weren't telling my grandparents at that point. But I said I'd let him know.

Then he said I have to get something out of the truck. I said ok and kept talking to mom. He came back with a box and said I'd like to give you something. I opened it and inside was this beautiful necklace. Two intertwined tear drop shapes, one silver and one gold. With a diamond in the middle. Gorgeous. He gave me a really big hug that lasted a long time. I could tell he was getting emotional. Then mom and I got into the car and started to drive away. He watched us leave.

Up until that point I had held it together pretty well. But five minutes after we left I started to lose it. Everything had been so overwhelming but up until he gave me the necklace it seemed like I could deal with it.  Besides, at that point I didn't know if I'd be able to see him again before we had to leave to go home. I do have an update or two left in the story. Not that it's close to ending. It's just getting started.

After showing people my necklace at work, I heard a few of them call it a father-daughter necklace. I didn't know there was such a thing... but if that is what it's really called it just makes it even more special. It means he put a lot of thought into it. Which apparently is nothing new.

That's all for now! More updates to come and my second bloggerversary is coming up. No idea if that's spelled right. But hey, I'm using Blogger so... Anyway... later peeps!

Overwhelming number of shaking leaves

Have you ever been overwhelmed with your genealogy stuff that you don't know what to do next? I mean sure, most of the time I'm searching for more stuff. The missing links. Those times when you have hit every other brick wall and are forced to spend time working on siblings of your direct ancestor. And then boom. You're at your 15th cousin five times removed's wife's uncle's second wife's great grandfather. Usually that only happens to me on geni. Just keep adding and adding and adding....

- if you have a tree on ancestry... And I think most genea-nerds do... You know about the hints. Those shaking leaves everyone gets excited about in the commercials. There may come a time when the number of hints is... Overwhelming.

- you think that would be awesome right? So many hints how can that be bad!?!?

- lets just say that I have 9095 hints as we speak. And no I didn't make up that number. How did it happen you ask? I just kept adding to my tree. Those lovely family tree hints? Yea those are like the gateway drug or something. Before you know it you're in deep. Oh it has five siblings and the parents?! Cool! You think so. But then boom. Those 7 new people all get 2 hints each and that's 14 leaves. One hint led to 14. Hypothetically.

- think of it this way. You have 4 grandparents. Say each has the family tree hint, an in each of those you have parents and 2 siblings. 16 people. If those 16 people have a family tree hint thats 16 hints. But they should all have at least 1 census hint right? 32 hints. All of your male ancestors so far have military records? Add 6 more (minimum... You could have draft and pension records ) so we're up to 38 hints. If all of those people are dead? Add a record each for SS, Obit, and findagrave.  So now we could have 86 records for 16 people! Imagine if you have thousands of people in your tree! It just gets worse from there too.

- the further back you go you have more records, for the obvious reasons of the tree growing. But back in the day people may have had 8 kids or more. Adds to the hints you get. And of course anyone can have those headstone pictures. Do you have a Revolutionary war vet? Even if they're not a direct ancestor you get the war record, a pension file, a dar or sar record. Then if you're lucky enough to get to back in the day Europe, maybe some nobility or royalty, you get those family crests and flag pictures. You know what I mean. Then there are the wicked awesome castle pictures. Before you know it you have hundreds or thousands of hints and you ask yourself how did this happen?

- in not saying I don't like the hints. They're wonderful. But what do you do at this point? Start with photo and story hints? I have less of those so it could be a start. Family tree hints? Nooo that's how we got into this mess. Just walk away from it? Sounds like a plan for now at least.

-anyone else have this problem? What do you do?

Happy Independence Day!

I was so ready for today. I had my old navy flag shirt. I had my red white and blue ponytail ribbon hair thing. I had red white nd blue hair clips. Ready to tackle a flag cake at work with my residents. My body clearly had another idea. Started to betray me on Saturday. Boss gave me the day off today which most people would've like woo! Off on the fourth of July! But I can't enjoy it. Well, I'm sitting on the couch watching a history channel special on the revolutionary war. And I've already tweeted a bunch of my geni revolutionary ancestors, or declaration signers and I'm afraid it will limit my tweets. So here I am on blogger. I'll make this quick note before I forget: watching this show, they portrayed Ben Franklin as having a mullet. Nice. So was he the first one to sport that look or what? Also: any weird unconnected train of thought is related to my meds. Lol. A while back, I mentioned my gazillion my DAR troubles. How on one side of my tree those relatives may not be blood relatives. Then on my "fathers" side, I have so many related by blood, but no way to prove it. So frustrating. I've already mentioned the other revolutionary ancestors, so now I'll focus on my dads side. I can't prove anything, since there is no marriage certificate or other proof to connect me to my fathers line. I wish the DAR would just accept a ancestry.com tree and look at it that way. Anyway... A list of revolutionary ancestors from my father's mother's side: George William Byrd - 7th gg James Hudson/Hutson - 8th gg Adam/ John Addem Foust - 7th gg Frederick Emeret - 6th gg Capt. Andrew Mellick - 5th gg Daniel Weidman - 5th gg Abraham Labar - 6th gg Archibald McMahn Johann Martin Schultz Anthony Cressman - 7th gg Um... Holy cow. Here is some stuff I found on ancestry.com. I'm not citing anything because... Well my head hurts and I'm not in school so there lol. "when cornwallis surrendered (at yorktown)george byrd was a standing right thar and saw it...." Decisive Battle Patriots vs Loyalists; Archibald R McMahan was taken prisoner, escaped, turned himself in. Battle of kings mountain in N.C I hope the links work. I'm starting to get sleepy so I'll end it here. Hope everyone has a happy and safe 4th of July!

Headaches, Hatfield's, and Free Stuff

Well this has certainly been an interesting week. Month really. Between finalizing plans for a photography gig and finding out I get new/additional responsibilities at work the week has been nuts. And things have just been whirling in my brain. Oh, and I did absolutely nothing productive on my two off days. Or that's what my mother would say. In my mind adding 1000 people to my geni.com tree and going through hints on ancestry.com is quite productive.

Now I know just clicking on hints for family trees is not necessarily the good thing or the right thing to do. And I admit to quickly going through them when I should take my time and check the dates and yadda yadda. But hey I'm an impatient chick. Anyway betweem ancestry.com and geni I added about 1000 people to the tree. The merging feature on geni really helped with that. Mind you, you have to pay for that feature but it does help. Then there's the whole who am I related to feature. Since I added all of these new peeps to my dad's side of the tree I wanted to see if any of those changed. They relationship path's didn't change. New ones just appeared. It seems that I'm related to most people on both sides of my tree. Meaning that my parents are distant distant cousins. Safe to say my head was spinning trying to keep everything straight.

I'm not packing up for West Virginia or going out to buy a banjo yet.... Although I am related to the Hatfields (on both sides of my tree). If you follow me on twitter (@bibliophile89) you know all of this already. I've been tweeting during the History Channel special of the Hatfield's and McCoys. At first I was just kind of doing my little accent imitation... it's so easy to get caught up in that... but then it was more of the yelling at the tv/ yelling on twitter and just thinking the whole thing was pointless. Which, it was. I mean all those people were killed over a fight that started with a pig and a Romeo and Juliet romance. And testosterone of course. There was a lot of that going on.

Before I forget I'm going to throw in a little plug for Geni. By now you should all know I love them and that they are responsible for getting that WSJ writer to contact me. A few months ago they offered to send me a free shirt for being so awesome (you all should know when I'm throwing in some humor/sarcasm in by now). So I was like oh thats cool sure here's my address. I told my mom and she was like oh yeah whats the catch? Or... yeah that will happen. Actually that was her response to my "I might be in the wall street journal" comment. And we all know what happened with that.

I received the package a few days ago. The reason it took so long is that there was a typo in the address and was sent back yadda yadda. But they emailed me and we got it straightened out. Well I just figured there would be a t-shirt in there and I would've been satisfied. So I opened it up and le gasp not one but THREE shirts and two pens. I don't know about you, but I love free stuff. Especially clothes. I believe their merchandise is available on their website too if anyone is interested. P.S I'm not working on commission although I wouldn't decline any offered money. LOL. Anyway the one shirt was just plain white with the geni logo on the arm. The second is black with the Geni logo across the front and a mini tree on the back with the words "who's your daddy?". The third is a cute pink tank top with the logo on front and the tree on back. I think that's my favorite so far. If you are interested in buying the tanks run a little small and the t-shirts run a little big. Oh! I almost forgot about the pens. Now normal people wouldn't be excited about pens but hey. The one is just a normal pen with a logo. Blue ink. Writes well. But the other... the other is fun. I love fun writing utensils. If I had my way I would be like Garcia on Criminal Minds with the feathered pens and bright colored stuff. This pen lights up. It glows blue when you click the little button. But all of that for free! I was pleasantly surprised and excited. I can't wait to wear my new gear and get more people into genealogy.

I meant to talk about more things tonight. I really did. I guess it will have to wait until next time. I really would like to talk about my DAR troubles and the whole biological father deal. Those probably have to be two separate posts. Perhaps I'll visit some of those "new" relatives I added in a future blog. Like I did with the Persing's and Bieda's when I first started.

That's all for now folks!