Sunday: Rest and Regroup

Sunday, May 30:
After a busy and long week of study and research, the girls had a day off today since the Family History Library was closed. We needed the day to get caught up and regroup for another grueling week of "fun!" We spent this day by having a Sunday breakfast out on the town, doing a little shopping at a local mall and taking a walk around the Temple Square area. It was a gorgeous day here in Salt Lake after a few days of chilly temperatures and blustery winds. It seemed good to venture out into the real world and meet some living people for a change! The gardens in the Temple Square are beginning to mature and will be beautiful again this year. We always enjoy taking time to see and "smell" the gorgeous flowers as we tour the grounds. We discovered that there is a replica of the Temple on display in the South Visitors Center within the Temple Square. It was surrounded today by visitors and we could not even get very close to see it. It is an accurate scale model of the inside and includes all the tiny details of furniture and lighting etc. We took some photos and have included one of the real towering Temple walls as well as one taken of the scale model. There is also a video and photo website which features the Temple model here if you would like to take a closer look. It is quite an awesome little display. Enjoy one of our flower photos too, wish everyone could see the sights with us! We will soon get back to work looking for our ancestors and remembering them all on this Memorial Day. Our soldiers, fishermen, spies, mothers, fathers, crooks, laborers, and ministers--all.

To our loved ones gone: we salute you and look forward to meeting you soon, maybe even this Memorial Day, 2010- in the halls of the Family History Library.

You Go Genealogy Girl #2, Cheri

Murphy's Law and Genealogy

We are in Salt Lake City, in the library, staying at the Plaza Hotel. It took two carts and three men to unload Lil' Red yesterday afternoon. They took our "stuff" to the room, but we had to put it away. Whew!

It is apparent that we are not as young as we were a year ago. There was no rushing to the library last night to get in an hour or two of research. We groaned and moaned, took showers and crashed.

This morning I began the day on the second floor in microfilm. If anything could go wrong, it did. YGGG #2 made magnets for the file cabinets so we could easily return the film to the proper file drawer. The magnets worked good except the second time I used them somebody removed one and placed it on another file cabinet and threw the other one on the floor. The next "go wrong" was when I accidentally let a reel of film wind off the spool.

By that time I was tired of wandering around in the dark and joined YGGG #2 on the third floor in the books. This was a good move as I finally received some rewards for my research. However, when I got back to the room for lunch, I discovered that I had left my photocopy card in the machine. I tired calling YGGG #2 four times, but she can't hear/feel the vibrate on her phone. Fortunately somebody had turned in the card so I retrieved in once back in the library.

When YGGG #2 went to the room for lunch, she returned with a letter from the management of the hotel. I thought we were being kicked out, but instead we are being displaced. They are carpeting our floor, so we will be moving to a different room on Friday. Once again we will be packing and unpacking.

Since last year some changes have been made at the library. There are scanners that plug into your computer or flash drive through the USB port. That makes it easy to scan books and film. How great is that?

Tonight I tried to make photocopies with my hotel room card. It doesn't work! There are signs in the library to turn cell phones to vibrate. They failed to post signs to turn the sound down on computers. All of a sudden this afternoon on a web page on my laptop, it was announced very loudly that I had won a $1,000 gift certificate from Walmart.

Check back later. We will be in a different room and hopefully we will have found ancestors lurking around the corner in the library.

YGGG#1 - Ruby

One Leg of a Genealogy Journey

It's almost time to kick the leg (not too high) and begin the first leg of my journey to the genealogy mecca in the west ... the Family History Library in Salt Lake City.

I am leaving in the morning for the first leg of the journey which is a drive of about 2 1/2 hours to the panhandle of Nebraska. I will stay with YGGG #2 and for a few days we'll gabber genealogy, get our research materials in order and decorate graves in pre-Memorial Day homage to our relatives. The bed in the family room has been moved to an appropriate bedroom so now I will be sleeping in private. That means I can read, snore and be myself.

On Friday, May 21st YGGG #2 and I will load up Lil' Red and head to Cheyenne, WY, making a stop along the way to decorate more graves. We will stay in Cheyenne with her son and do research in the Wyoming State Archives and at the wonderful genealogy section in the Laramie County Library.

Finally, on Tuesday, May 25th, we will take off in Lil' Red heading west across Wyoming to Salt Lake City. The glorious moment will be when we unload our belongings and walk in the front door of the Family History Library. Nobody will say "ah, they made it" or "look who's here." But we don't care ... just let us at the books and microfilm. I have one large notebook full of research notes and material, plus items on my laptop computer. We will be there almost two weeks, so there is a chance I'll get through a good deal of it.

As for YGGG #2 she is going through her usual What-If-I-Don't-Find-Anything syndrome. For me even negative results are a "find." You just keep looking and keep the hopes running high. Research involves imagination and a lot of what-ifs. Our ancestors never seem to have done the normal or what we would consider to be normal. I recently read a journal account of a relative who was pregnant. She did not want to leave Indiana with her husband and family to cross the plains in a covered wagon. She parked herself in a rocking chair in the front yard and refused to budge. Finally her husband and his father picked her up in the rocker and plunked her in the wagon. I would have hoped my husband would have taken pity upon my condition and called the trip off or at least said we would wait until after the birth of the baby. Don't let pregnancies or deaths interfere with the mental process you use in understanding ancestors!

Keep tuned to You Go Genealogy Girls as we blog about our adventures. You can be sure they will be real-time adventures. We won't be going by covered wagon, but Lil' Red is ready to get us there in record time.

YGGG #1 - Ruby

Researching In Style

This last month has really been a busy one for both of us girls! We have been working each day, putting together our research notebooks, packing and re-packing, and planning our summer over the phone and through emails. At times it seems so mundane and ordinary but we work at keeping each other pumped up and motivated to get it all done. Girl #1 has also been getting Li'l Red all spruced up and ready to head west and she will do all the last minute road travel planning this week while Go Hubby and I make a short trip to Topeka, Kansas for our Granddaughter's graduation which I will share next week with everyone. We have about come to the end of our Salt Lake researching preparations and Girl #1 says she will need a bigger notebook if she keeps adding pages to hers. It is only a 4 inch size right now. Mine is also, but I have two! Trying to figure out what to take and what I can leave is just too hard--so I usually have to take it all. Last year I didn't use much of all the "stuff " that went in the extra notebook and I have been reminding myself that I vowed to leave some of the papers home this year. Who is that person that keeps whispering in my ear, saying "take it, take it"? Wishing I was a bit more organized with everything on my laptop but alas, I still live partially in the world of paper. At least if we get stranded in a freezing blizzard on the way to Salt Lake in late May, we can always live on our jar of peanut butter and jelly beans and then burn my paper "stuff " to keep warm- (yes, it is all duplicate copies so we are safe there.) We are almost good to go....

Last year we came up with the idea to mark the file cabinet drawers in the FHL with bright colored stick-em papers so we could find our way back to the right file drawer a bit easier and quicker. That worked fairly well but this year we will be going in style! All that a fore mentioned research and packing got me to thinking that I needed something fun to do for a break, so today I set out to make some fancy magnetic film drawer markers. Since we are taking all those wonderful little purses and all those beautiful shoes, we needed gorgeous magnets to match. My project got a bit out of hand before it was finished and they look more like party table favors than drawer magnets as they are sporting sunflowers, roses, oak leaves and feathers, but I guarantee these will be better than "a bread crumb trail" back to the file drawer. We can just gaze down the long aisle, spot our little fluorescent floral magnets, and run right down to the drawer. Anyone who has been to the library should appreciate how many hours of precious time this has the potential to save. Only trouble with that scenario is the fact that the two Grannies aren't very good at running any more, it would be just our luck to get our feet tangled up and go down in a heap and the FHL would probably ask us to leave for being unruly.The next day we would have to stay in bed and nurse the bumps and bruises which would negate all that saved time. These little beauties will save some time though and they will brighten up the drab film aisles at the least! Just the same, we are traveling AND researching in style.

Fill up your jelly bean dish, take time to relax and get ready to join us this Spring as we live the life of genealogy researching. We would love to have you come along on our journeys and we guarantee that you will have good time with us and maybe even learn something new and exciting along the way.