New Resolutions

Wow! 2009. Where did the time go?

I have set some personal goals for myself, in my daily life for 2009: 1) daily personal prayer and scripture study, 2) Pray the rosary on a regular basis, and 3) continue with some sort of community service (see next paragraph).

For Christmas 2008, my husband and I were blessed to be able to offer our time to the homeless, elderly and/or poor at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC. We acted as servers for tables of people dining on a traditional Christmas dinner sitting at tables decorated with fresh flowers and candles. Words cannot express the deep satisfaction that we felt at being able to serve God's people and for 4 hours we were on our feet without worrying about ourselves! It was liberating! I want to continue this service in 2009.

I have set the following goals for my genealogical and blogging research in 2009:

1. I will spend at least five hours a month working on my genealogy - especially those brick walls that I have.


2. I will print off current family group sheets and update my research. I have done this before, but the files are in need of serious updating since the most printing was done in 2001.


3. I will update all my sources in my Legacy program. I don’t like seeing undocumented genealogy, so I need to start updating and adding those sources.


4. I will find sources for everyone in at least one direct line of ancestors.


5. I will blog weekly about my progress. I added a link to this site on my facebook, flickr and footnote pages, so hopefully I will get more visitors :-)


6. I will add more information to this site. I get sidetracked and don't update in a long time and I think people stop visiting because they don't see anything new!


7. I will start posting photos on this site as well as my Flickr page. I have been blessed with so many old family photos, that it’s a shame not to share them.


8. I will get re-organized with my CLOOZ. I started using CLOOZ about 5 years ago and it was a tremendous help in getting all of my paperwork organized so that I could find things quickly. I am starting to see piles of paper again and need to start adding new documents into CLOOZ and filing them away properly!


9. I want to visit a Family History Library in 2009 and start using the wealth of information that they have to offer.


10. I want to complete at least one of my Texas First Family forms and mail them off to the the Texas State Genealogical Society. I have been diligent about gathering the correct sources required as proof, but now I need to act on it!

I hope that everyone has a great and productive 2009 and I wish you an abundance of health and happiness!!!

Cite Your Work!

Yea, yea, yea...I teach how to cite your sources all day long, but I have been caught not heeding my own advice! When I first started my genealogy hobby 13 years ago, I didn't bother citing where I got my information from because I never planned on publishing my findings and it was just "for fun!" Well, do I ever regret that decision! I still probably won't publish anything, but if only I knew where I got all of my information from so that I could verify it! I have met many distant relatives and shared information with many people and often I find discrepencies in our data. If only I knew exactly where I got that specific date in question (or city, or name, etc) then I could go back and check my work. Now I am in the process of citing all of the information that I have copies of, emails that I printed, books that I purchased, and it is painful, but productive!

I went to my friend, Georgia's, last Friday and got her started in Legacy Family Tree software and CLOOZ organizing software and yes, she is citing her sources because of my lessons learned! We will plan a trip to the Library of Congress library or the DAR library for my day off in September or October. That should be fun!

Still no headway on my "things to do list", but I am ever so hopeful....