Happy Valentines Day               My Valentine took me to Ruth Chris             Steak House at Harrah's in Cherokee. Salad with walnuts and apples; Steak and Shrimp, Mash Potatotes Sauteed Mushrooms, Bread, Peanut Butter cake                       with Chocolate Ganache.

                     I see dead people - but that's a genealogy thing. Hand me a shovel, my files and a pen. 


Have you ever thought about the odds that you would be here reading this? Prepare yourself for a shock. Obviously, you have a mother and a father, and each of them had a father and a mother. This makes you having four recent ancestors, and so on. The following is a chart that reveals how many direct ancestors you had in the 1600′s, assuming births were from about 30 year old ancestors. You would have 1,024, 7th great grandparents.

1 (your self)1948

2 (parents) 1924

4 (grandparents) 1889

8 (great grandparents) 1863

16 (great great grandparents) 1840

32 (great great great grandparents) 1804

64 (great great great grandparents) 1765

128 (great great great great grandparents) 1737

256 (great great great great great grandparents) 1695

512 (great great great great great great grandparents) 1656

1024 (great great great great great great great grandparents) 1623

            MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL MY FRIENDS AND FAMILY, NEAR AND FAR.
2012 has been a year of Happenings.  Jim retired in March which has enabled us to take some trips, work on projects at home that we have been putting off.  My son got married to a beautiful girl in September and we love her.  I live in NC and they live in NV.  We went out for 3 weeks and since I don't fly, we drove.  You see so much more of the beautiful country this way.  My son has a daughter who will be 12 on Valentines Day and she is a Pitcher on a Fast Pitch Soft Ball Team and loves it.  She does great.  My daughter, who lives in NC and works in HR has a little boy who is 6 .  He was  2 pound preemie when he was born.  He is now in Kindergarten and doing great.  Jim's daughter's oldest was married this year and the two youngest girls are 10 and 13.  We took them to see the Christmas Lights in McAdenville, NC last week.  This little town has been a big 'thing to see' for the past 56 years.  They decorate the entire town, every house, every tree.  It is truly amazing.  My prayers for the new year is good health and happiness for all our children and grandchildren, and for Jim and me as well.  We are looking forward to a trip to the NC Outer Banks in late Spring to do some resting, relaxing, fishing and of course eating fresh seafood.  I pray for our great Nation because right now, we need God more than we ever have.  Family will be at my house for Christmas.  Lots of great food, fun and opening gifts.  Then, on December 26th, this tree is coming down and the decor will be put away.  I'm already thinking Spring.

My New Daughter

I have a new daughter-in-law.  Her name is Mary Liu Collins.  She is beautiful inside and out.  They live in Nevada.  We just returned home from a 3 week visit in Nevada to meet her and her son Andy.  What a blessing to have her in our family.  She taught English at the University before coming to Nevada.  She has a wonderful sense of humor, is so much fun to be around, very polite and family oriented.  They are both very happy and we are as well.  My son finished his MBA last year and I am very proud of him.  He is a great dad to his daughter Elora, who is almost 12.  She loves Fast Pitch Softball and is a pitcher on a Tournament Team.  She is also very creative, loves crafts, nail polish and shoes.  She is a lot like her Grammy! *smile*

My Friend Tracy

My friend and cousin, Tracy Glatz and her family came to NC to visit and do some researching while on vacation.  Tracy and I spent the day researching in Mitchell County, NC and visiting a few cemeteries.  She is as addicted to Family Researching as I am.  I have known her about 10 years, before she had her two pretty little girls, right after she was first married.  This is the first time we ever met and it was so great.  We both descend from the Grindstaff Family, a very large family that came from Germany in the 1700's.  I was accepted into the DAR in 2009 on this family line.  I was so excited to finally meet Tracy and her family.

If we keep expanding our family tree, doubling the number of grandparents with each generation, in 38 generations we have approximately 256 billion grandparents – a number that exceeds more than all the humans who ever inhabited the earth.  We exist on a tiny branch of the one human tree.