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

Celebrating Family History, Nebraska Style!

This has been a busy last few days as our museum, The Knight Museum and Sandhills Center in Alliance, Nebraska has been getting ready for Family History Month -now in full swing. At the center of our planning, museum employees and myself have been designing displays and getting set up for our month long celebration. We are in our brand new building this year and are excited to celebrate our families!

The centerpiece of our display is an eleven foot long pedigree chart which hangs from ceiling to floor. It contains the history of the Newberry family, one of Alliance's pioneer families and covers a span of 200 years. What a beautiful chart it is and will certainly get our visitors in the mood to begin their own genealogy research. The Heritage Room is always open and volunteers are there on Tuesdays to help visitors find their records or start their family research. Nebraska Roots and Ramblings has a nice blog all about our ongoing museum celebration and special day on Oct 28th, so be sure to check it out. You Go Girl #1 has showcased our program in fine style.

As an added bonus for us, The You Go Genealogy Girls will be together again later this month as we host local family history displays and present the program for the Heritage Seekers, our museum genealogy and historical group. We will spend a few days together again doing research, presenting our program and working on our new project: learning the wonderful aspects of "Google Earth" for genealogists. We don't seem to have enough to do already so will attempt to become proficient with maps! Lisa Louise Cooke's DVD series, "Google Earth for Genealogy", will hopefully teach these old grannies some new tricks!

If you are in the western Nebraska neighborhood, stop by and join in our Family History celebration at the Knight Museum and Sandhills Center. You just might see The You Go Genealogy Girls lurking in the halls or haunting the old sod house which is showcased in the museum. After all, Halloween will be just around the corner after our big night of Family History fun!

Kansas City Family History Expo-A Blast!

I can't believe it has been nearly two weeks since the awesome Family History Expo in Kansas City and they are already gearing up for the next one in Salt Lake City! Son, Jason , accompanied me to KC and attended the Expo with me. (I actually "invited him" to be my chauffeur). He was in for a surprise when he arrived at the Family History Expo as he expected a small conference and a few meetings! As usual, Holly and her group put on an exceptional Expo and we both had a wonderful time there. The class offerings were excellent and Jason who is a History major was more than pleased with what he learned. We also met some really great new friends from the world of genealogy, one of whom was Thomas MacEntee of Genea-Bloggers fame.

Thomas hosted several lectures which centered around the use of social networking sites to aid the genealogist. I attended his fine presentation on Facebook and went away with several new things to try out and some great tips on how to properly use Facebook: making it work for us as genealogists and how to "safely" set up a new account. I use Facebook daily but gleaned many tips for its productive use that I had never considered before. Thomas also presented a class on Social Networking: "New Horizons For Genealogists" and another on Twitter: It's Not Just "What I Had For Breakfast" Anymore. It was great to finally meet Mr. MacEntee! He welcomed us warmly to the Bloggers of Honor area and even passed out some of his famous badge ribbons to add to our name badges. Along with his Genea-Bloggers ribbon, I now proudly sport one that names me as QUEEN. (You Go Genealogy Girl #1 has one from the Loveland Co., Expo that says she is a DIVA...) Surely the Queen must rule!!!

Everyone there was super nice but Thomas made my son and I feel welcome right away! Thanks to him for adding to our fun Expo experience.

Thomas MacEntee also has a new book out this week called "Approaching the Lectern: How To Become A Genealogy Speaker". It is available as an e-book, epub for the Kindle, and in printed form. For a nice review of his book, click here to see the article by Susan Peterson on her Long Lost Relatives blog. For more information you can check out either of Thomas MacEntee's sites: Destination: Austin Family or The Connected Genealogist. I have the printed form on order and am anxious to see it. I know it will have great information to aid us with our genealogy presentations!

Tomorrow I will share some other personalities from the Expo...

You Go Genealogy Girl #2, Cheri

The Girls Are Nominated

The You Go Genealogy Girls blog has been nominated for the Family Tree Magazine's 40 Best Genealogy Blogs. There are 10 categories. We are listed in the Personal/Family Category. Click here to vote.

The 40 Best Genealogy Blogs will be named in the May 2010 issue of Family Tree Magazine. Girl #1 and Girl #2 would appreciate your vote. You can vote as many times as you wish between October 5th and November 5th. Sounds like stuffing the ballot box to me! If it works ... we love you for it.

Ruby ... You Go Girl #1