Kreativ Gratitude: My Secret Genealogy Ambitions

I write the following as a sincere "thank you" to Sherry Stocking Kline of Family Tree Writer (a very informative and entertaining blog - check it out if you haven't already) for the Kreativ Blogger Award. I was so entranced as I read her "Seven Things" ('cause she sounds like my alter ego) that I was inspired to reveal some of my Secret Genealogy Ambitions.

(Much of my genealogy research for the better part of the past year has consisted of dutifully adding Normans to my database and transcribing Moore family obituaries. It’s good work – I’m happy to have the information – but sometimes I get a little bleary-eyed. And when I get bleary-eyed, I start to get distracted. And when I get distracted, I start to get silly. Right now it’s genea-fantasies, the more outrageous, the better):

* To be rich enough to order birth, death, marriage, will, and land transcription books to my heart’s content, without the guilty feeling that I shouldn’t be spending so much money.

* To win a “Blog Makeover,” with Thomas Macentee of GeneaBloggers and Destination: Austin Family covering the technical aspects, one of our talented digiscrappers such as Vickie Everhart of BeNotForgot working on presentation of family photos, and someone such as Leslie Ann Ballou of Ancestors Live Here handling blog design. (And, yeah, Sherry, some of that Photoshop stuff.)

* To have an un-researched line that doesn’t have a super-common surname such as Smith, Moore, or Lewis.

* To take The Ultimate Genealogy Fantasy Road Trip, occasionally joining up with convivial genealogy travelers such as the You Go Genealogy Girls Cheri Hopkins and Ruby Coleman, or Linda Hughes Hiser of Flipside, or Carol of Reflections From the Fence, or Becky Wiseman of kinnexions.

* To have the money, time, and proximity to the venue to be able to attend some of the major genealogy conferences. (I missed two recent conferences that were not too far from my own back yard – FGS in Philadelphia in 2008 and NGS in Richmond in 2007.)

* To be able to do that Google Earth for Genealogists thingy that Pamela and Rick Sayers do where you can superimpose historical maps on Google Earth maps.

* To get a response to every e-mail I send out to contact the people who posted messages on my family lines long, long ago and to have everyone who has found their family lines on my blog to actually contact me.

That’s all I can think of for now. Guess it’s time to get down out of the clouds and back to that enormous Norman family. Now let’s see if we can find the maiden name of my third cousin twice removed’s first wife….

Again, thank you for the award, Sherry, as well as for the inspiration.