Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The year of 2010 has been a great and fun year for The You Go Genealogy Girls. During this past year we have been able to pursue our love of genealogy in many different ways and were privileged to get to meet so many new friends along our well traveled roads. We got to meet and make lots of new friends this year while we attended some great Family History Expos and during our annual research trip to Salt Lake. Every museum, library and even some of the cemeteries we visited brought wonderful new discoveries and we even made new friends in each of these places too! Thanks to everyone who helped make our year such great fun and for adding to our list of "new best friends". We love you one and all and thank you for being our friends and faithful readers. We hope to see you all again soon and to have the opportunity to meet many new friends too.

The Lord willing, us sisters-in-law (also known as the You Go Genealogy Girls) will be on the road again in 2011 to pursue finding even more treasures and knowledge. We feel so lucky to be able to do what we really love and being able to do it as a team surely does make it even more enjoyable. Those newly discovered ancestors should appreciate the excitement and love that two of us at a time exhibit when we manage to bring them into the light. Two silly old Grannies jumping for joy in the dark recesses of a court house or library must be quite a site as we have been known to celebrate and exhibit unruly behavior. We may have to tone it down a bit in 2011 and act more our age......or maybe not!

Our wishes are that each and every one of you will have a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year with your loved ones. This is such a special time to make new memories and also to remember those awesome people who went before us and provided us all with the opportunities we have in this world.

We will resume writing in 2011 and see you all very soon!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from The You Go Genealogy Girls; Ruby and Cheri



You Go Girl #2- Cheri

My Favorite Things

The lyrics to the song "My Favorite Things" are so fitting for a genealogist. We could rewrite it and end each stanza with "These are a few of my favorite things."

Do you have favorite things in your genealogy or your research? Having started my genealogy before computers, aka B.C., I can honestly say my computers hit the top of the list of my favorite things. Years ago I was at a library conference where a young man told us how every book would be cataloged centrally and available universally. He also stated we would be able to search home computers for information about anything in the world. What a vision he had! There were some laughs and exclamations of doubt. But, I believed him and kept waiting. Here we are with home computers, mobile computers and Internet, which is at the top of my list also.

For various period of time I have my favorite ancestors. They are all very special to research and I enjoy spending time investigating them. Because they can't talk to me, I talk to them and try to discover where and how they lived. When I discover photographs of them, I am taken on a journey back in time. We are so different and yet so alike.

I still marvel at how my scanner copies photographs. I can make changes to them, adjust the colors, saturation and density, plus print them out or attach them to my genealogy software. One of my favorite scanners is the hand held one I can put in my purse or computer carrying case. I'm telling my age, but I can remember the delight of owning a Brownie camera. Now I use a digital camera and see the photographs in an instant. I prefer this day and age, so I would have to say my scanners and digital camera ranks high on the list of my favorite things.

The other day some genealogy friends were engaged in a conversation about books ... genealogy books, historical fiction and non-fiction. One of my favorites is Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick. We all know the Mayflower story, but he takes it deeper and a step beyond. Another New England story is told in Killed Strangely the Death of Rebecca Cornell by Elaine Forman Crane. Rebecca was supposedly killed by her son, Thomas Cornell. It makes for entertaining reading and is also a good example of the court system in New England.

While in Virginia for Christmas two years ago I read The Lee Girls by Mary P. Coulling. It was a perfect book for a perfect setting, about the daughters of General Robert E. Lee. I was staying north of Lexington, Virginia and could imagine the Lee family, the pre-Civil War era and during the war. This book is definitely one of my favorites.

A year ago at Christmas time I read Someone's Daughter by Sylvia Pettem. This is an account of the search to identify a missing woman. She was found murdered in 1954 near Boulder, Colorado. The author takes the reader on a twist and turn narration of a fifty year search. It is poignant and heart breaking, but also brings to mind that we all have relatives who have disappeared.

Each time I purchase a genealogy book, it becomes my favorite. Some I refer to more often than ours, such as Ancestry's Redbook and The Source. They definitely top the list of favorites, but occasionally another book will sneak into the list.

I'm thankful for the genealogists who care, share and help others. There are so many of you who have become my favorite genealogy people. Let's all start singing ... "These are a few of my favorite things."

YGGG #1 .... Ruby

Among the Nominations

You Go Genealogy Girls Blog has been nominated again for 2011 for Family Tree Magazine's 40 Best Genealogy Blogs, aka Family Tree 40. There are 8 categories and 117 nominations.It is an honor to be nominated again this year. We wish to thank our readers for the nomination and their votes.

If you like our blog, please click here to vote for it. You can also click on the Top 40 badge in the sidebar to place your vote. Please encourage your friends to vote for our blog. You can vote for five blogs in each of the categories and vote more than once. We encourage you to visit often and vote often! We are listed in the EVERYTHING category.

We are in good company. There are excellent blogs among the nominees. Be sure to visit all of the blogs. All the genealogy bloggers work hard to support our community so take the time to visit each one. Each has great information and stories to share, you will surely learn something new from each one.

We appreciate your support and vote! And we aren't even politicians!

YGGG #1 -- Ruby

YGGG #2 -- Cheri

Lazy Day...a December Sunday

Have you ever had one of those weekend days when you have so much to do and no ambition to do it? I will bet that every genealogist has gone through one of those such days. Your desk is piled with papers waiting to be filed, files already on the computer need to be organized, newly arrived photos need to be scanned, Christmas gifts for early shipping need to be wrapped, wash could stand to be done (even though it is Sunday), Hubby is home from work and wonders what will be for dinner ...and so do I! Oh my, the list just goes on and on.

Today the sun is actually out and it is warmer outside without the darn wind blowing. I should go out and finish a bit of Holiday shopping this afternoon as I have conveniently put that off citing windy conditions that have kept me from it all week. I hate shopping in the wind: car doors fly open often jarring the hinges, something always manages to blow out of the car, the automatic door of the store never opens and I am just plain grouchy when it is windy. Maybe shopping would cure the Sunday lazies. Maybe not.

Let's get busy and cook a great seven course meal as it has been while, even for that. Sounds really good, doesn't it? Mom's homemade chicken and noodles with fresh mashed potatoes, baked squash and maybe even a pie. Yum, wish I had a cook....and a maid!

It would be awesome to see those 1830's family Bible pages all scanned and printed out on beautiful paper. Great, great, great Grandmother probably spent a Sunday just like this all those years ago just getting all those names added to that Bible. A thoughtful scrapbook page would surely show them off beautifully. You Go Girl #1 is also anxiously awaiting the appearance of those treasured scanned pages. They seem so content in their little box all packed among photos of their family, this is not the day to disturb them.

Those nasty dirty clothes....well I am sure we can find something clean to wear tomorrow. We might be sporting summer shorts, tank tops, and inside-out underware but since it is winter anyway and the furnace is already running we can just turn it up a few degrees and be wonderfully comfortable!

Speaking of comfortable- I have decided, this will definitely finish out as a lazy day Sunday.
I'm on the way to the kitchen to tackle the arduous chore of throwing some things together in the crock pot for "supper" and the ice cream cake is already waiting in the freezer for dessert. The maid can at least serve it when it is ready!

A grand cup of hot, white chocolate in hand and my cozy soft blanket wrap are all I need this lazy afternoon in December. I will settle in my easy chair with my four new genealogy magazines that have been beckoning to me. Actually they have been calling to me for several days now so it is only proper that I should answer that call. They might just decide to disappear in the shuffle, never to be seen again if I do not pay them some homage this day. I will also dream on that Christmas List from the last posting, that will come when I lay down my new Internet Genealogy magazine right in the middle of an article just to catch a few winks. ;) What of all that "other important stuff"? I bet it will still be around on Monday and maybe I will even get that shopping done...tomorrow.


Thank you to Susan Peterson from "Long Lost Relatives.Net" for awarding us with the ANCESTOR APPROVED award, our second one! We are blessed with good friends and loyal readers.

You Go Genealogy Girl #2--Cheri
----------------------------------------------------------------

image of lady and Santa from :"Two Dog Pond" blog. She makes beautiful glass art jewelry. Check it out for unique handmade gifts from Nebraska!

All We Want For Christmas ...

Dear Santa,

This is what the You Go Genealogy Girls want for Christmas. We hope you will visit us on Christmas Eve. Please ... no coal in our stockings! We will put out cookies and milk.

YGGG #1 - Ruby wants:

1. Ink, ink, ink and more ink for the printer ... always out.

2. Paper for the printer.

3. Days of non-stop genealogy planning and research.

4. Time to read all the genealogy periodicals that are piling up.

5. Success in Salt Lake City in the Family History Library in May and June.

6. An iPad would be nice.

YGGG #2 - Cheri wants:

1. An iPad.

2. More hours in the day. Make those uninterrupted hours!

3. Time for organization and planning.

4. A large printer to work on oversized old photographs.

5. Success in Salt Lake City at the Family History Library in May.

6. New genealogy books.

We both look forward to a new year and new challenges in our genealogical research. Life will be interesting for both of us as we from month to month in 2011. In January, YGGG #1 (Ruby) will add a new bud to the family tree. She will become a great grandmother to a baby boy. The girls are planning a trip to Salt Lake City the end of May into June. Our annual trek always promises great experiences and new "finds." The Family History Expo in Loveland, Colorado will round out June for us. In September we plan to attend the FGS Conference in Springfield, Illinois. Before we know, our wish list for Santa will be on our minds again.

As we wrap gifts, bake goodies and decorate the tree, we are thinking about our ancestors. They are on a tree that in places remains undecorated ... lacking full names, dates and places of events. It is somewhat bare, but we hope to decorate it in 2011.

Best wishes to all this December,

YGGG #1 --- Ruby