My 3 New Year's Resolutions

When I was invited to participate in the 63rd Carnival of Genealogy and post my 2009 New Year's Resolutions, I agreed to do it because it's only the 2nd Carnival I've participated in and I thought it would be good to participate. I was anticipating Christmas at the time, but thought I'd have no difficulty changing gears to "planning" for the New Year when the Christmas Holiday was over.

Now that the time has come for me to consider my resolutions, I see that I could easily make a list long enough to accommodate the next 5 years, instead of just 2009. It seems I've fallen so far behind in my genealogy this past year that I have a lot of catching up to do. Thirteen months ago my husband underwent surgery for a hip replacement and in the months that followed I wore several different hats--not one of them being a genealogist! Then 5 months ago my father fell and broke his leg in 2 places, which has left him largely immobile since then. He's doing quite well now as he manages daily life on his own in his home, but as I've had the opportunity to spend time with him since then, I've put my active research up on a shelf. I've been greatly blessed, however, as I've spent time with my Dad, for we've had many conversations about his early life, discussing the times, the trials, the customs and the people from his Germans from Russia heritage. My research has been of the "oral" tradition and it's been delightful.

Which brings me to my first resolution for 2009:

1. As I was preparing Dad's house for his return home from the hospital, I cleaned out closets, drawers, entire rooms. To my delight, I found many scrapbooks, photo albums and framed pictures of people who've lived within the last 100 years. My first goal is to scan most of those photos and load them onto my Picasa Web Albums.

2. My second goal is not as exciting. In this past year I've accumulated quite a stack of papers that need to be taken care of. Emails that need a reply, addresses that need to be entered in my database, documents that need to be filed with the appropriate family. I hope to tackle that stack of papers.

3. And my 3rd resolution has to do with updating my family information on the New.FamilySearch.com database. I'm anxiously awaiting Bruce Buzbee's release of RootsMagic V. 4 so I can use it to transfer data from New Family Search to my RootsMagic database, and conversely transfer data from my database onto New.FamilySearch. I worked diligenty on my family information in that database last Spring, but had to put it on hold also as I've tended to more pressing matters.

I'm determined to make progress on these tasks, but relieved that I have a FULL YEAR in which to accomplish my goals!