Archive for December 5th, 2009

Sherry Stocking Kline
December 5th, 2009

Thanks to Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings we can let the kid in us out to play tonight while we write our letters to Santa!

Hey, fellow geneaholics, it’s Saturday Night, and time for lots of Genealogy Fun!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission: Impossible music), is to write a nice letter to Genea-Santa Here are the directions:

1) Write a letter to Genea-Santa and ask for only ONE thing. It could be hardware, software, a missing family Bible, a record that you desperately want, etc.

2) Tell Genea-Santa what a good genea-girl or genea-boy you’ve been this past year and give examples.

3) Exhibit your posts on your own blog, in a Facebook post commenting on this note, or in a Comment to this blog post.

So – go forth and write your letter!

Dear Genea-Santa!

Thank you for all the great Genealogy gifts you have given me this year, the impromptu family gatherings we’ve had, the marriage licenses I’ve found, and tombstone photo I located on DeadFred.com, and most especially my Twitter and Blogger friends who have welcome me and helped me join their genealogy community!

And Please, Santa,  help them get their genealogy wish list this year.

Who was my Great-great grandfather Jones?

Santa, I know times are tough right now, and even Santa and his elves are cutting back.   So, the one thing I’d love to know, the one record I’d like to find, is who was my Great-grandfather Willis Washington Jones’  father?

I promise I’ve tried to be a good little genea-girl this year, Santa, and tried to help others when I knew an answer to a question, tried to encourage other genealogists when they were running into brick walls, and forwarded neat information on Twitter.

I wrote a “how-to-get-started-doing-genealogy” blog post to help someone interested in locating their ancestry. I also brought home a box of ‘orphan photographs’ from a garage sale to try and locate a good home for them. (Still working on that!) And I was asked to help locate a living relative/descendant so someone can return some photographs and memorabilia. (This has proved to be tough! Several deaths and no living descendants thus far.)

I’m sorry Santa that I didn’t get more tombstone photographs uploaded to DeadFred.com.  I promise to do better next year, Santa, and I’m sorry that I got a little behind keeping track of the births, marriages, and graduations in my dad’s side of the family.

Santa, I promise that I will start sending out new questionnaires along with my Christmas card!

And Santa, along with the butterscotch cookies and milk I’m leaving out for you, I’m giving you a large economy size bottle of Tums ‘cuz I just read that you have to eat 87 million cookies on Christmas Eve…

Thank you, Santa!

Sherry

by Sherry Stocking Kline
December 5th, 2009

GeneaBloggers’ Thomas MacEntee has a neat Advent Calendar Challenge going for Genealogy Bloggers! Today’s challenge is below:

And for those of you who think you can click ahead and cheat, just try it! Thomas has that covered on his calendar, too.

I would remind him, though, that after 12:00 midnight, it is tomorrow, technically it really is…

Outdoor Decorations

Did people in your neighborhood decorate with lights? Did some people really go “all out” when decorating? Any stories involving your ancestors and decorations?

No farmer that I can recall had Christmas lights in their yard…

I grew up on a farm, and no farmer that I can recall had Christmas lights in their yard, nor did anyone in the tiny town that I grew up near.

Today, it is fairly common to see Christmas lights outlining  tractors and other equipment in a farmer’s front yard (especially antique tractors) and sometimes the big round bales as well!   The decorations are as unique as the owner’s imaginations!

It wasn’t till I hit my teen years that I spent a lot of time in a  slightly larger town, and we began to notice that more and more people were decorating their yards, probably in part due to the Christmas lighting contest that offered  prizes for the best display.

After I married, my husband and I began to take my mother, who positively loves all Christmas lights,  around the towns and sometimes to the Christmas Display “Isle of Lights” on a small island in the middle of a creek in the nearby town of  Winfield, Kansas, where each year new displays are added.

Often the car is full to capacity, Christmas carols are playing on a CD in the stereo, and old and young voices are ooohing and aaaahing at the displays.

You can hear “Look, over there!” and “Isn’t that beautiful…”

Before and after our visit to the “Isle of Lights”, we travel some of the more well-lit streets, searching for more Christmas displays, and you can hear “Look, over there!” and “Isn’t that beautiful…” over the sounds of “Silent Night” and “Silver Bells” on the radio. (Singing along is allowed and encouraged!)

Placing outdoor lights on our home (my husband’s and mine) was something we always talked about, and didn’t do until the coming of the “icicle lights”.  Somehow, those captured our imagination, and we bought strings for ourselves and my mom and up they went, lighting the area around our homes in a beautiful radiant glow, especially on snow-covered ground.

I think the Mountain Genealogist said it best on her Advent Calendar post:

When the sky goes from light to dark on a mid-December’s evening, and there’s a light falling of snow, and I turn on that little strand of lights, my little home suddenly takes on a different look.

Suddenly, it becomes a humble beacon to the celebration of the birth of the One who made this season all that it is!

How glorious is that?

Amen…