Monday, December 31, 2012

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun ~ On Monday, Oh My!

I know that I'm very late...and on top of that I'm going to "cheat"!

Here is our "mission" from Randy Seaver over at Genea-Musings: 

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to: 
1) What gift that you received for Christmas is your favorite for genealogy purposes? Book, magazine, hardware, software, website subscription, research time, DNA test - what was it, and how will it affect your genealogy research? 
2) Tell us about it in a blog post on your own blog, in a comment to this blog post, or in a comment on Facebook or Google+ in response to this post. 
3) Come on, spill! And it's OK to respond to this in the days after Saturday too!

The gift I am going to talk about is not one that I received, it's one that I gave. It's actually a project that was started quite a long time ago.

When my nieces and nephew were young I would often tell stories about them to everyone at work.  They were, of course, the most amazing children in the world!  A good friend told me that I really needed to write these stories down.  I agreed, that sounded like a great idea and I kept saying that I would get around to it.  As time went by I just kept saying I would get around to it and finally my friend shamed me into it by writing some of the stories herself and e-mailing them to me.  I guess she has heard them a time or two!!  That got me started and very soon we had a nice little book.  Now this was in the mid-1990's and I didn't have a digital camera or any type of fancy way to make a book.  The "book" was just plain paper with a stiff orange paper cover.  It was certainly not fancy, but the kids loved it anyway and really liked listening to stories about themselves. 

So, fast forward to the age of digital pictures and many wonderful ways to put those pictures in books.  The same friend happened to mention that now I could add pictures to the stories.  That seemed like it would be a nice, quick, little project - WRONG!  While I still had the original word file for the stories, as I started working on the project I wanted to expand and add more stories.  Also, as I would copy the stories into the new format and then try to find pictures to go with that story it took more time than I thought.  While I could often "see" the story as it had happened, that didn't mean we had a picture necessarily.


 Well, I worked feverishly up until December 9th and finally got it finished and submitted.  I was getting concerned as I had ordered it before the deadline stated on the website AND I paid for 2nd day shipping.  Even with that I didn't receive the books until December 24th.  I had ordered one for all three of the kids as well as my parents and sisters.  But all ended well and now we have a book that has a picture on the (hard) cover as well as many pictures inside.


The very best part for me - and maybe this was really MY present - was that we opened these books last, by design, and then sat around and read all the stories out loud.  The kids remembered so many other things as well. We all laughed and talked about stories that weren't in the book - so maybe I need to start thinking about volume two! It was a great end to Christmas morning this year.

As we were cleaning up the living room I heard Colton ask his sister if the book on the floor was hers.  Her answer?  "Oh no, mine is already in my suitcase so I can take it with me to Joe's (her fiancé) I'm going to make him read the WHOLE thing!"


 

17 comments:

  1. Diana, a wonderful gift and now those stories can be saved for generations to come! Thanks for sharing.

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    1. Thanks Mary - I certainly hope this is something that THEIR grandchildren will one day be reading!!

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  2. How wonderful that you were able to get it completed for Christmas - what a special gift for everyone!

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    1. It was touch and go for awhile - I had to place and "emergency" call to my sister that last day for a few more picture :-)

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  3. What a fabulous gift, Diana, and one that's obviously already cherished. I'm sure it was a labor of love, but oh so worth it!

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    1. There were a few evening Shelley when I wasn't so sure it was worth it ;-) but in the end it was so wonderful to see the response!

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  4. What a wonderful gift for your family and countless future generations.

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    1. Thanks! I just hope I can get some of those "future generations" interested in genealogy :-)

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  5. Well done, Diana - the books are family treasures. Start on Volume 2 now! Happy New Year and best wishes for 2013. Jo :-)

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    1. Thanks Jo! And you are SO right...I really should start right now!! I think I'll at least go make a note of some of those other stories the kids remembered - not write out the whole stories, but just one or two lines to remind me.

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  6. Yes, this is a wonderful gift. Diana, I have been a member of Geneabloggers for just over three months. I received "An Early Christmas Gift" and wrote about it to this great community of bloggers. This was also the best Christmas present I could have received. Happy New Year and Happy Blogiversary.

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    1. Thanks Grant! I just stopped over to read about your Christmas present - wonderful!!! And Happy New Year to you as well.

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  7. Thanks Jim! It's hard for me to believe...I hope to do more blogging this year than I have in the past year.

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  8. Diana that is a wonderful gift. Well done. Well done. I have had our kids along with our neighbors kids that used to live behind us write down all their fun stories in a notebook years ago.
    There are not enough to make a printed book with but now that they are all adults they still giggle like little kids when they read them again.

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  9. Thanks Lori - I think that was the fun part, hearing them all giggle just like when they were young :-)

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  10. That's a marvelous project & a very thoughtful gift!

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  11. What a special gift, Diana, especially with all the thought and effort that went into it. You've created an heirloom that will live on for generations.

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