Wordless Wednesday - Lagorio

Jennifer and Anthony Lagorio. San Leandro, California. December 18, 1983. Scanned image. Held by Cheryl [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE] California. 2009.

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My Genealogy Trading Card

What great fun Sheri Finley has started! Randy Seaver added to the fun by making this a "Saturday Night Fun" item. I am a bit late for Saturday night fun, so I am doing this for Sunday night fun! Here is my trading card.

Several bloggers have made their trading cards, and they are great! Have you created your trading card? Have you started your collection? You can go to Big Hugh Labs to make yours if you haven't already done so.

My trading card is complete so now I am off to start my collection. Thank you Sheri and Randy for this two-fold treat. First we have fun with the creating and then we have more fun collecting!

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Forty Best Genealogy Blogs

Family Tree Magazine is asking you to vote on your favorite Genealogy Blogs! Questions have risen regarding the voting procedure. Over at footnoteMaven's blog, you can read the questions she proposed. As usual, footnoteMaven is on her toes! Great questions!

Dianne Haddad of The Insider Blog at Family Tree was also on her toes and posted a reply to the questions footnoteMaven asked. If you click on the link of The Insider Blog you can read Dianne's response.

Conclusions, as footnoteMaven understands this voting process are posted here. Now you have all of the links so you can follow the process Family Tree Magazine is promoting.

My understanding in this process is that you are actually nominating your favorite blogs. Nominations may be made until September 30, and you may nominate as many blogs as you wish, although they must be nominated one at a time. If you choose not to read the above links you can still go on ahead and vote for your favorites here.

The actual voting will take place October 5 through November 5 as explained in the links. So take the time to nominate your favorites. I have nominated some and plan to nominate more!

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Those Places Thursday - Bohannon Middle School

This is where I went to middle school, Bohannon Middle School in San Lorenzo, California. One of the neighbor friends and I walked to school together. I remember it seemed so far away back then. Looking back now, I think it is maybe a half a mile or so from where I lived.

I remember getting into trouble when I was attending this school. One particular girl and I became friends. She lived on the opposite side of town from me, so I never knew her before going to school here. If I remember correctly we were both girl scouts also. I also think this girl had a handicap of some sort, but I can't remember what it was. Maybe she walked with a limp?

After a period of time I remember there were some girls who teased me because I spent so much time with this friend of mine. Then I became aware that she always wanted my attention and I didn't fit in the "cool crowd" anymore. I couldn't tell her to stay away from me, so I wrote it in a note. Hurt her feelings. Bad. The school called my house, her parents called my house and my parents were all over me. I learned a couple things back then, I never wanted to deliberately hurt anyones feelings again, and never, never put anything in writing you don't want to come back at you! Hum, school days and the cruelty of children. All to be part of the "cool gang."

I don't recall this girls name, but if she is reading this, I apologise. I know I was made to back then, but this time it is from my heart.

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Wordless Wednesday - Burney Falls, Ca.

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A Different Monday Madness, and Tuesday Madness and Wednesday Madness...

It is the end of summer and I am wondering why I am so busy all of a sudden? I was concerned about being so busy during summer, but lately, wow! Time...there isn't enough....there isn't enough of it...ever!

I have many projects I am working on. In this post I will name just a few. A new laptop was an extremely wonderful and surprising gift for my birthday! It took a week before I could even turn it on, that is how busy I have been. Now that I have I want everything transferred from my old laptop to the new one, right now! Not going to happen, I already tried. Main obstacle, many of my programs are not compatible with Vista. Second obstacle, the new computer doesn't have Word or Excel, and of course all of my files are done with those programs, not Microsoft Works, etc.

I understand Windows 7 is coming out the beginning of next month and I do have a free upgrade coming. Until that time, maybe I will just work off the old laptop. I have copied many of my family history type documents over, and many pictures, but not all. It is a process. I understand FTM doesn't like Vista either, so I probably won't even work with that yet. I have downloaded Roots Magic and so far so good, but I haven't entered anything in the program yet. I downloaded my Kodak Easyshare program and it already doesn't want to work. Looks like my programs are good up to the XP time period, the end.

I am still updating some of my picture CD's. I have maybe 25 more to update and that project will be done!

One of the new cousins I have met has been sending me photos and information. She actually mailed me her family tree info on our family. WOW, so much new information to go through, but oh, so fun! I am truly enjoying so many new photos that I plan to share. I, in return, have spent some time sending information to my cousin, along with photos. She says I make her days with the photos!

I was real busy for a couple weeks or so with my other blog, The Graveyard Rabbit of South Alameda County. I have been doing a series of posts on that blog which led to some very exciting exchanges and meeting new people. I still need to work on that series, I am behind and behind with the communication of someone I met because of my posts.

As of last month I have been babysitting my grandchildren quite a bit, but with school starting now and schedules changing, I may be down to a couple of days a week. I am also watching my nephew after school every day, and taking these children where they need to go or come from. My grandchildren spent most of this weekend with us as my daughter was out of town. Little ones sure keep you busy! Such a joy though, I am most fortunate to share in their growing and learning almost daily.

I have also been in the middle of a small business venture, off and on. More off than on actually lately, but I need to get back to that too. I have been sewing and making things. Baby slings are what started me on this venture and purses have followed and well, you know, it just keeps growing...and I am behind. Focus on this project is important to me, and I need to dedicate some time.

Being healthy is an issue that has been long overlooked most of my life. Something, anything and everything has always been more important than taking care of myself. The time has come that I am going to improve my health! I actually already started this process on March 25, when I quit smoking. So, September 25 will be six months that I have quit. I am pretty darn happy about that! I feel I am ready to start breaking another habit. My challenge this time? An addiction to food.

Food is my all emotional safety net. I am happy, I eat. I am tired, I eat. I am stressed, I eat. I am bored (when do I ever have a chance to be bored, really?) I eat. Someone else wants to eat, I eat. You get the picture. I am sure I am not the only one in this boat. This change has actually started a couple of days ago. I attended a Yoga hypnosis type of meditation for weight loss a couple days ago. I will be attending three more of these this month. I am also going to attend a support group for weight loss on another day, at the Yoga studio. My daughter has been trying to get me into Yoga. She has done wonderfully with it for the past couple of years and loves it so very much. I am finally going to give it a go. She is attending a beginning class with me this Thursday evening.I am tired of having back aches and being so uncomfortable due to my weight. I want to be more flexible, comfortable, and healthy for me and my family. I am excited. I hope the enthusiasm stays with me.

All in all, it has and will be busy for me for awhile. I feel as if I have a full time job again with everything going on. I plan to post as I can, but it may not be as often as I had been posting. I need to simplify. The list I have of "want to do's" can be endless...I hope you don't mind hearing occasionally about how I am doing. I am hoping I to do a lot of bragging.

My "Monday Madness?" TIME. There is NEVER, NEVER enough time! I can't accomplish the things I want to in a day. Time, it goes to fast...

(The real problem? My real madness? I need to give up some things. With all the extra time I gained when I stopped working...I have just added and added and added so many things I want to do... when will I learn I can't do it all????)

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Those Places Thursday - Navy Ship

This is a scanned photo of the ship my father lived on while he was in the Navy. I know this is a "place" he will never forget! He was injured while in the Navy and spent nine months in hospitals. He has possession of the original photograph, I scanned the image in September of 2008.

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Treasure from a Phone Call, or Two

A week has just blown past me and I have no idea how that even happened. We have had some hot weather this week, which always tends to wipe me out. I have been rather busy with my normal routine but there have been several added and even unexpected events. All in all, another tough week for me to blog.

My grandchildren (the prince and princess) are always number one and I donate my full attention to them when they are with me, at least twice a week for anywhere from nine to twelve hours. Other evening activities and such have completely worn me out and left my blogs rather quiet. Sometimes I just don't have the time or energy to do it all!

I did make some phones calls that I had been wanting to make. My newest contact had given me a number to another cousin in MN. I finally phoned this cousin, and when I did it sounded like she had given up on me calling her. She kept some family information next to her phone that she wanted to share with me for at least a week, and then put it all away. I knew she was more than happy to receive my call, and I let her know that I was more than happy to wait while she retrieved the paperwork.

We talked and shared information. I was under the impression that another cousin had published a book on this family line, the Westbys. You can imagine how excited this news made me! This particular cousins phone number was graciously given to me. I was told she lives in Montana. After the phone conversation with the "first" cousin, I made sure I understood all the notes I took and reconstructed them, so it was cohesive and in order. Then I proceeded to make the phone call to the "second" cousin.

This cousin was not expecting my call, and all I knew about her was that she lived in Montana. I stumbled at first when she answered the phone and stated she was who I was calling for. I did catch myself right away though and quickly tried to explain who I was and how I ended up calling her. Before I was finished, she knew who I was and started talking to me about some of my relatives. She told me I made her day by calling her! Isn't it wonderful when we get receptions such as this one? She had no idea how happy she made me, although I tried to tell her! I was a bit disappointed though when she said she had not published a book and more than likely never would. but, I got over that quickly as I knew she had a lot of family history that I was lacking. We agreed to exchange information, at our earliest convenience.

After I hung up the phone I immediately started checking all the information on the Westbys that I had accumulated in my tree. I needed to make sure I had good sources on all of the information in this line and that there weren't holes or notes I hadn't entered yet. (I also wrote the notes over again from this conversation and restructured them neatly) I spent a couple hours working on this line until I was comfortable with it. I then sent it to my cousin in Montana, via email.

I understand how busy people are (after all I am usually one of those people) and really wasn't expecting a copy of my cousins genealogy information for some time. I was very surprised actually when she sent me an email and informed me that she was double checking all of her information, making sure all of her notes were entered for the family before she mailed it to me. Her genealogy is on an old version of Family Tree Maker, and from what she stated, it couldn't be imported to a newer version, so she prints out what she wants and snail mails it. I don't mind! I know it is coming.

What she has been able to do for me in the meantime is send me some pictures via e-mail. The first one was such a surprise and actually gave me tears. I recognized a couple of these children, which made it more emotional. I hadn't seen pictures of them as children before. I thanked her and she has sent me a few more pictures. Every one of them is so very precious! I will be looking to see if I have any photos that may be of of interest to her, or that she may not have. I am not sure I can do much for her, but if nothing else I can send her a photo of me! She has no idea what I look like!

I have had contact with many different cousins this past week that I have met since I started this blog, and actually before that. It takes time to be thorough and precise and elaborate when sharing information with others. I have spent a good part of my week working on these replies knowing how important they are. Sometimes you just have to do the most important thing at the time. Blogging was on a back burner, but well worth it in my eyes. Just look at all the treasure I have started to accumulate from these calls. Hope to share more with you soon on my Westby family.

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Wishing you success in all of your genealogical treasure hunts!