Those Girls

The girls (grannies) are at it again. Aunt Cheri visited Mom for a week in February. They did non-stop genealogy. Mom has to get Aunt Cheri up in the mornings because she is a night-owl. Then Aunt Cheri is prowling around reading computer and genealogy books half the night. Eventually they both get in sync. In February they even managed to take my daughter and I out to eat dinner, and the chatter was completely genealogy and their efforts in trying to find people, alive and dead.

Aunt Cheri is returning in a few weeks. The You Go Genealogy Girls (grannies) are presenting the March program for the local genealogy society. Mom uses a Mac and Aunt Cheri has a PC. Ok...that's just another way they are different besides their night/day routine. Their program will be a power-point presentation on available software for the Mac and the PC. It's not a case of who will win or who has the best power-point presentation, but rather how much they can talk about in one hour. You go girls!

April...that's when spring returns full force to Nebraska. But, it can also be a time for a snow storm or two in Nebraska. The sandhills cranes have arrived early this year, so perhaps we'll have and early spring. Then the You Go Genealogy Girls will out in full force. Mom has a genealogy seminar she is presenting after Easter. It's a one day affair...another non-stop genealogy function.

May... those girls are really off and running! The first weekend in May is the Nebraska State Genealogical Society conference. Mom will pack up her little red car and head to the panhandle of Nebraska to meet Aunt Cheri. They will fill three of four days with genealogy lectures, get-togethers and meetings. I am sure everybody will know the You Go Genealogy Girls are there!

Mom returns home for a little over a week and really packs up the little red car. She will drive to Cheyenne, Wyoming where she'll stay at her nephew's house and meet the other You Go Girl...Aunt Cheri. They will do Wyoming research in Cheyenne and then set out after a few days for Salt Lake City, the mecca for genealogists. I'll let you know what the car looks like loaded down with the girl's "stuff." Mon will e-mail me the details. They have been working all winter on their packing list!

Salt Lake City is for genealogists like Las Vegas is for serious gamblers. Those girls (grannies) won't come up for air. Mom will be up early in the mornings to walk and get ready for a full day at the library and then nudge Aunt Cheri to get out of bed. They seem to strike a happy medium in their personalities and habits, both of which deffer.

Stay tuned for more episodes about the You Go Genealogy Girls. They have agreed that Mom is #1 girl and Aunt Cheri is #2 girl. They may differ in some respects, but they can also agree!

Family

From an early age I was taught the importance of family. Fortunately I had two sets of grandparents and remember my great grandfather, George. I barely remember my great grandmother, Opal (my father's grandmother). My father had a brother and sister which is not considered a large family by any means, but throw in cousins and nieces and nephews, it seemed to swell.

My January birthday usually falls in the midst of the worst weather in Nebraska...snow, wind, and frigid cold temperatures. Occasionally mother nature surprises us with a breath of fresh air, only to throw us back into the Nebraska-tundra of winter. With this uncertain weather, my grandparents very seldom came from out of town for my birthday.

That was okay, because we had one big celebration in March. My paternal grandfather, Freddie's birthday was on March 9th and my paternal grandmother, Irene's birthday was on April 3rd. They were married on March 20th. My Aunt Cheri has two boys, Daniel and Jason, and their birthdays are March 12th and March 18th. How many more could we add to March? My maternal grandfather, Bob, was born March 31st. My great grandmother, Opal, was born March 12th and my Aunt Stella was born March 31st. Okay, so March was THE month.

Sometime when the weather man reported descent weather, we would get together for a family dinner in March. Because of the size of the group, we would usually have it in a special room at a restaurant. Sometimes everybody would be together in Grandma and Grandpa's house. There would be a lot of smiles, a lot of visiting and for us kids, a lot of playing with cousins. Always there was a special cake. Most importantly it was a time to realize how thankful we were for relatives...our family.

As my brother and I grew older, these get togethers became more difficult. My brother was in college, I was married. But we tried and we did manage to get in our March celebration. I can remember a cousin commenting about my brother driving from Iowa to the panhandle of Nebraska in March for our usual birthday party. He said, "he really does love his grandparents." It was a natural...we had plenty of love to go around for everybody.

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.