Me, In Elementary School

    I haven't been participating in the 52 weeks of personal genealogy this year, but thought I'd participate this week - mainly because I wanted to post some photos. This week's theme is Elementary School.

     I attended Kindergarten through second grade at Rebecca Minor Elementary in Lilburn, Gwinnett, Georgia. Some of my earliest memories are of kindergarten in Mrs. Wight's class. I was sooo scared to start school and stuck near the teacher and para-pro the first week.  I was partly scared because I was separated from my twin sister for the first time. She was in the classroom next door, but it seemed hundreds of miles away. Eventually I got into it though. I loved to read and do arts and crafts. Here's the class photo, I'm in the middle row, third from the right. I wonder if I'd even brushed my hair that day?

Here's my report card from that year, pretty good overall:

(A=Apply Concepts/Skills, E= Exploring Concepts/Skills)

Blurb: eBooks now available

     There are a bunch of different options for creating family history books. My favorite is Blurb, which lets me combine my text, documents and images into a quality product at a good price. I can purchase books to share with family, or give them a link and let them purchase their own copy.

     A few days ago I got an email from blurb with their latest update (they're always updating). Now, you can turn your creation into an ebook.

"Have you heard the news? Your books made with BookSmart and Bookify can now be transformed into beautiful ebooks for just USD $1.99. Show and share your books on your iPad, iPhone®, and iPod touch® using the iBooks® app and Blurb. Take a look, take your books electronic, and take them everywhere you go."

     Right now, ebooks are available for only Apple products but Blub says they are "hoping to offer other eReader options in the future."  This could be a great way to publish your family history books and share them with your family - for only $2.

Boatright + Ba...

a family history s...

By Valerie R. Craft

Book Preview

Britt Kids (in the snow?)

    There's been a big snow storm up in the northeast and, though we didn't get any snow down here in the south, it's been colder than normal. This year's trick-or-treaters had to bundle up a little!  Here, we're all hoping for a mild winter after last years's snow/ice storm trapped us all inside for most of a week.

     Ok, but what does this have to do with genealogy? At a recent Barfield family reunion, I saw this photo for the first time:

     At first I was excited to see a photo of my Great-Grandfather, Nathan Britt, with all four of his children.  But when I started looking at the photo I realized: it's snowing! I'm not sure where the family was living at the time, southern Emanuel County or the more northern Elbert County, Georgia. Either way, ground covering snow would have been rare; perhaps an event that occurred every five to ten years. And boy do they look unprepared! Only the youngest girl, Helen, has on a coat.  Burr!

NaBloPoMo: I'll give it a shot

     November is National Blog Posting Month (some folks do this every month, but November is the biggie). It's a pretty simple concept: publish a blog post every day this month. I'd heard about this before, but have yet to try it. A few days ago I saw it mentioned on Planting the Seeds, and thought it be doable. It sounds challenging, but I'm going to give it a shot. Check out NaBloPoMo on BlogHer for more information, as well as prizes and prompts.  Need genealogy related prompts? Check out geneabloggers.com, which has a meme for every day and a ton of blogs to browse for inspiration.

     Anyone else going to give this a shot?