THANK YOU

This week I've been transcribing the audio from one of the interviews I did with my father who passed away almost ten years ago. As I was marveling at the family stories contained in one recording I realized that I owed a BIG THANK YOU to two people: Thomas MacEntee and Pat Richley-Erickson (Dear Myrtle).

Without them I would be doing sometimes genealogy and never going back thru what I already had. Genealogy Do-Over on Facebook. I 'officially' started the do-over in July claiming I was doing a go-over. However, I spent most of my time taking advantage of all of the prompts, resources and tools to re-connect with the genealogy world and bring my skills up to current standards. Unfortunately, I'm still not consistent about using a research log -- even though that was a skill I learned in the early days of my research and I have my original log to prove it.

That changed last spring when I discovered the

The Genealogy Do-Over provided a chance to rediscover skills and techniques that I had let slide for several years. For me, one of the best things that came out of participating in the Genealogy Do-Over was the encouragement to seek out learning opportunities. Since them I have watched numerous webinars and participated live when my schedule would allow. I even was able to watch some of the live feed from RootsTech earlier this year.

From that push to find learning opportunities, I started watching Mondays with Myrt and Whacky Wednesdays. Viewing those webinars encouraged me to participate in the year-long Finally Get Organized project sponsored by Dear Myrtle. As I've been organizing my notebooks, I've found letters and other documents I hadn't read in a long time and didn't remember having.

Dear Myrtle's assignment for this week was to spend each day telling the stories. For the first two days, I wrote blog posts pulling the content from my memory, from a letter from my mother and from my father's military record. However, on Thursday, I decided to see what was on the interviews with my dad (and mom). Thus, I've been spending my time transcribing one of the audio files. This file is full of stories -- some I'd heard over and over, some providing more detail to the old stories and some I'd never heard until the interview and since forgotten. Today, I hope to finish the transcription of the first file and begin the sharing process.

Thanks again to Thomas MacEntee and Pat Richely-Erikson for the push (kick in the butt) to get me to stay connected to the genealogy world, to re-visit my files and to share the pictures and stories with others!