Memories

Thanksgiving 2008 is over. We ate turkey at Mom's house. It was a traditional Thanksgiving with the turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie and more. Nobody asked if they had Mayflower ancestry. Mom would have had little time to eat telling them about their ancestors and naming off all that came within a few years after the landing of the Mayflower.

While the Friday after was Black Friday for some, it is traditionally the Nebraska football game for us. And what a game it was this year when they won over Colorado. I can remember going to the stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska the day after Thanksgiving to attend the game. I would go with my Dad, my Grandpa and my brother. Earlier games my parents would take my brother and me to the game. Mom would longingly look at the Nebraska State Historical Society which is on campus and wish she could have a few minutes there. As the game became more interesting, she soon forgot about her genealogy.

In September 1995 Mom was in Salt Lake City doing research. Dad called her about his tickets to the Nebraska football game that weekend in Lincoln. Mom dropped everything and came home. She got off the plane, went home and repacked her luggage and they hopped in the car for the game. I would say at times Husker football is almost as high on her list as genealogy!

Mom is trying to figure out how many shoes she can pack and how many research notes and books she can cram into her carry on and big suitcases for holiday trip to Virginia. She will be leaving in a little more than two weeks to spend Christmas in Virginia with my brother. I am sure she'll find libraries, bookstores and cemeteries. They will be spending Christmas week in a mountain cabin in Virginia. I am not sure how Mom will survive without e-mail and Internet. That's why she needs to take fewer clothes (can always wash) and more books.

She also hopes to meet up with a genealogy friend in Washington, DC before coming home. They will talk non-stop genealogy (that's a strange language in case you have never heard it). I am sure she'll return with new information and also great memories of how Christmas 2008 was spent in the mountains.

Girls

I have written about my Mom and my Aunt Cheri ... the You Go Genealogy Girls. They aren't exactly girls. Mom has two grandchildren, my 20 year old and my 10 year old. Aunt Cheri has seven grandchildren and one on the way will be number eight. They all are in the same family. She sometimes thinks she's a "real" granny. Whatever that means!

Aunt Cheri recently suggested that they should be renamed You Go Genealogy Grannies. I don't know if that's appropriate either. I wouldn't want to slow them down thinking they are "old" grannies. They really GO, not only physically but mentally. Nothing stops them from pursuing their genealogy.

Mom will visit Aunt Cheri later this week. She is giving her two days to recover from her genealogical research trip to Wyoming. They plan on sitting up their laptops and going non-stop for several days in preparation for their spring trip to Salt Lake City. One thing about them, they don't procrastinate until the last minute.

This month Mom will finish teaching her genealogy class at the local college. She'll also get things ready for the program of the local genealogy society. Sometime along the way, she'll make some plans for Thanksgiving. It's a good thing she keeps a calendar to keep things straight.

I'm not sure about the next journey of the You Go Genealogy Girls. There's a few months between now and May, so who knows where they will end up and what they will be doing. Now I've decided...they are so young at heart, I'm going to continue calling them girls instead of grannies.

The You Go Genealogy Girls

They are at it again, planning more research trips. They should be planning Thanksgiving and Christmas, instead they are already looking to spring when they will take off on a big trip.

In case you don't know the You Go Genealogy Girls, they are my Mom and Aunt Cheri. They both speak nothing but genealogy-talk. And they really aren't girls. The are grandmothers, but don't tell them they aren't girls. Sometimes they giggle and act like teenagers.

Their big trip 2009 will be to Salt Lake City to use the Family History Library. It will be Aunt Cheri's first trip there. Mom thinks it might be scary just taking her there. The problem is apparently on how to get there. There are various options.

At first they thought about going on Amtrak. That would mean Aunt Cheri driving to Mom's house and then me taking the "two girls" about 70 miles south of here in the middle of the night to get on the train. Same for return home. They both agreed, given their age and night time habits, it would be best to have a sleeping room with toilet and sink. After all, who wants to see an old granny wandering around a train the the middle of the night looking for a toilet?

The next obstacle is that such a sleeping room on Amtrak has a lower and upper sleeping compartment. Now the squabble is on as to which one has to climb the ladder to the top bed. That shows their age! They were delighted to learn that they would have a table that they could set up their laptop computers. Another squabble. Mom uses a Mac and Aunt Cheri uses a PC. While they don't work on the same genealogy, they occasionally compare notes and one wonders why she can't get something to work on her laptop that does on the other.

They are now thinking about driving to Salt Lake City. They will go to my cousin's house in Cheyenne and after visiting him and resting up at least one night, they will go to Salt Lake City. That means they will wait until at least mid-May so the mountain passes in Wyoming are clear. They now think this would be fun as they could stop as they want, they could possibly extend that one week trip on Amtrak to just a little bit more, as long as they still have some money. Coming home, they might even go somewhere else...who knows they might end up in Denver. One reason Aunt Cheri wants Mom to drive them there is because she can load the car with everything imaginable and buy to her heart's content.

When it comes to the You Go Genealogy Girls, anything goes. They dream in living color and compare notes on genealogy and trips by phone and e-mail. It's nice that older people can have so much fun!

Mum is Home

My Mom has been traveling most of August. Her latest trip was with my brother to London. That's as in England! It was her first trip there and his one of many. She said her first experience was going through immigration when the man referred to her as my brother's Mum. Otherwise she was pretty much known in London and England as Madam. I never think of my Mom in terms of either Mum or Madam!

What did my Mum enjoy most about the trip? Cemeteries, cemeteries, cemeteries! She doesn't seem to deviate. She would walk miles to get to a cemetery. The first she visited was Highgate Cemetery (west) where she took a tour. She had walked a long ways to get there and soon realized the tour would be a breeze. The elderly man guiding them was slightly overweight and winded, giving her adequate time to snap photographs.

On her trip to Salisbury and Stonehenge she said the coach would not stop at all the quaint Norman churches so she could walk the cemeteries. That means Mum will have to go back some day.

She said the best part of visiting St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminsters Abbey was exploring the crypts. That's my Mum!

The day before she left to fly home, she informed my brother that she was taking her own personal tour by herself in the Brompton Cemetery. Off she went on the tube in search ofa cemetery. Mom was snapping a photograph of tombstones when a man approached her saying to not trip over the squirrels. there were squirrels around her feet in search of food.

I am sure she is still dreaming of London, riding the tube, old cemeteries and crypts and trying to calculate how long she has to wait for trip number two. That's my Mum!