SCGS Jamboree 2011 ~ More Fun Than Christmas!

I don't even know where to start to explain how much fun Jamboree is!  It's a combination of family reunion (if all the really crazy relatives showed up), Woodstock (and, no I was not there), a three-day non-stop party, and an amazingly intense learning experience - sometime all at once!

To start with there was the Geneablogger's Welcome Bag.  Please click on the link to see all the amazing vendors who contributed something.  No, really - go look; I'll wait.  See, I told you! This was NOT filled with the sort of trinkets that you quietly discard later.  Oh no - this was the "Christmas" part. We got tee shirts and CDs of webinars and beads and food and a PH testing pen and there were a lot of cool free offers and too much to mention - thus the picture.


On the first night Geni.com hosted an ice cream social for the Geneabloggers.  Here are a few of the pictures that no one has paid me sufficiently NOT to share.
Ooops, someone forgot to tell Randy Seaver and Cheryl Palmer that the hula skirts were not meant to be worn on their heads.  Their friend there is Peter the Parrot.  He will apparently be making another appearance tonight.

Sheri Fenley was explaining SOMETHING important to one of our Geni.com hosts.


More to come, but another sessions calls.


 (And someone, who shall remain nameless but his initials are THOMAS is complaining about the millions of pictures in all the blog posts )

This is the Face of Genealogy

For me nothing exemplifies my genealogy more than this picture.  The youngest girl here is my great-great aunt Laura.  She was born in Ohio in 1901 and it is thanks to her that I have so many wonderful pictures and stories.

Her father - the man sitting - is Rudolph Graber who came to this country from Switzerland in 1877 as a young man of 23.  He came with very little and ended up a successful farmer with a large and happy family.  His wife, Emma Zaugg was born in Ohio to a family that had come from Switzerland sometime prior to her birth in 1860.

I have the original picture hanging in my genealogy room to remind me what the "Face of Genealogy" looks like.




PS - to see what this is all about, stop over at Geneablogger and find more posts about The Faces of Genealogy

Don't Let Someone Else Put a Swan on Your Head!

So, quick survey – how many of you are reading this wondering how I will relate this to family history!?!?

I’ve been putting together a book of stories from when my sister’s children were young. We call it “The Mouser Family Absolutely True Stories.” I wrote down many of these stories back before there were so many cool ways to put words and pictures in books to share. These are just all in a word document. So, now I am gathering pictures and trying to make them into something to share.

This is the story I am working on today and I just couldn’t resist blogging it as well.

When my sister’s two girls were about 3 and 5, the older one could torment the life out of the younger one just by what she said. One of Kyli's favorite times to tease her little sister was when they were in the car. I guess sitting there in those car seats had to be pretty boring because before too long, Kyli would look over at her sister and say (very quietly), “You have a swan on your head.” Codi would immediately wail, “Mommy, Kyli says I have a swan on my head. I don’t waaaaaannnt a swan on my head!!!” Very often actual tears would ensue. My sister could try to reason with Codi but it didn’t really matter because Kyli SAID the swan was there. Of course Kyli would just sit there with an angelic look on her face. Sometime it would be a dinosaur or even an inanimate object that would be “on” Codi’s head. The results were always the same however. Over the years as we’ve re-told the story – as family’s will – it’s always the swan we use to tell the tale.

As adults, we laugh at how gullible poor little Codi was to fall for something so silly. How could something her big sister said override the obvious fact that there WAS NO SWAN? Yet as adults we do the same thing all our lives – we believe that one bad thing someone else says no matter how many others tell us it isn’t so. We even spend time worrying about that stupid swan and refuse to listen to those we know are “older and wiser” who tell us that really, we do NOT have a swan on our head!

It’s become something of a proverb in our family now, “Don’t let someone else put a swan on your head.”

Hot Off the Press

The latest issue of Shades of the Departed is hot off the press!!  There is a new feature debuting in this issue and I am thrilled to say that I had a small part in suggesting it.  As far as I am concerned, being mentioned in Shades is my 15 minutes of fame - and it's really made my day.

So, drop on over to fM's and pick up your copy today - while they last ;-)

Photographs in Politics

March/April 

Family Events ~ March 14 - 20

March 15th ~ On this day in 1881 in Apple Creek, Ohio my 2x great-grandparents, Rudolph GRABER and Emma ZAUGG were married. I've posted previously about the incredible coincidence of my becoming best friends with the great-granddaughter of the minister who married this couple, Edmund ERB.

March 17th ~ On this day in 1800 in Cape Girardaeu, Missour John ROSS, the 4x great-grandfather of my nieces and nephew, is born.

March 19th ~ On this day in 1852 my 3x great grandparents Jacob ZAUGG and Anna Barbara BARTCHEY are married in Berne, Switzerland. [pretty obviously NOT a wedding picture, but the only one I have of them.]

This day in 1892 is also marked by the death of my 3x great grandfather, Thomas SWINTON in St. Andrews, Scotland. I've previously posted a picture of his gravestone.

March 20th ~ On this day in 1795 in Bern, Switzerland Jacob ZAUGG, father of the above Jacob and my 4x great grandfather is born.

Also on this day in 1844 my 2x great grandmother, Caroline FLORY is born in Wayne County, Ohio .