A busy weekend with a Sunday morning suprise!

Author: MiniBullyMom aka Laura B. // Category: , ,
Well I have been camped out on the laptop all weekend taking advantage of my free 30 day Ancestry.com membership. I had to upgrade my FamilyTreeMaker (FTM) program last week when I found out that FTM Version 10 wasn't Vista compatible. Hmm...go figure a program that is almost 10 years old not being compatible. Soooo...off to amazon.com I went and in the end I decided that the $39 it cost me to get the latest version (basic one) was a small price to pay considering I've only spent a total of $15 when I first bought the program almost 10 years ago and the very first FTM program I had was one that my dad bought 15 years ago but never used. The upside of the $39 is the 30 days I have to download as much census information I can. I have made good use of it and got my money's worth out of it.
In years past ancestry.com has offered free memberships for 2 weeks and I've taken the opportunity and at one point I even had a paid membership for about 6 months. So I'm familiar with what they offer. This time around I've focused on getting every bit of US Census Data I can on the Garbett's (any Garbett whether they are related to me or not) to augment the data I already have. I'm also going to go start downloading info on my Renfrow and McDaniel's this next week and hopefully be able to start working on tearing down a couple of roadblocks I've had for years.
I've been able to download census images and ships passenger lists. I am excited about incorporating a couple of them into scrapbook pages. I have an idea that I'm going to play around with where I "magnify" the actual family names on the image as part of the layout itself. I may have come across the work of a fellow researcher whom if I can get the "tie-in" to my tree established to theirs has some wonderful photos. Not that I don't have alot of photos already nor access to them .... I suppose when you are a scrapbooker you could never have enough photos!!!
Oh and on to the suprise!! We woke up this morning to a couple inches of snow...I know for most people this isn't suprising but for Western Washington in March it is suprising. Here is a photo of my backyard (yes it's a little neglected at the moment) looking out of my kitchen sink window.
So I decided that I'd better turn on the tv to see the weather forecast and I'm glad I did because apparently it's supposed to get pretty windy this afternoon. Although I'm glad we don't live near the Hood Canal (not that I wouldn't love living there) because they are supposed to get about 5 inches of it this afternoon. There is a chance of lowland snow tonight again which really shouldn't affect work tomorrow morning since we don't have patients all week-the boss is in Florida. No hockey practice until Tuesday night so that won't be affected at all either-not that it ever does because hockey doesnt' stop for snow in this neck of the woods or any neck now that I think about it.


I visited a real cool blog this morning it was very refreshing because the blog owner is documenting her journey to get a grip on her family's debt. She has decided to blog about it (Life in the Debt Lane) and I love her style, her candor and why she is doing it. This past month I started talking to my DH about the very same thing and how we need to create a plan to eliminate it. We don't have a problem with how much we have to pay and we are both lucky in the sense that our jobs are pretty safe from the recession. But I'm just tired of not having a savings or emergency fund. I have a 401k and I freely admit that the only reason it gets contributed to regularly is because it comes out of my check before I even get it. Twice in our life we have paid it all off and closed accounts but three years later I find we have went right back to our old habits. We will charge this or that not really realizing that we are paying out the nose for it in the end. Two weeks ago I took the first step of pulling my credit cards out of their spots in my wallet so that they weren't easily accessible. I haven't used them since even though they technically are still in my purse (seperate section). I am now going to take the next step and go stash then in our safe so that all temptation is removed. I went and removed them from my paypal account so I can't "cheat" that way and since the only card number I have memorized is my debit card it means that I'll be taking right from the checking account if I use it. Although I don't know if I'm ready for going "cash" only for all my purchases. I am determined for us to not "charge" any bit of our summer garage roofing project. Of course it means that we will do less camping this summer but that is okay because we have our whole life to enjoy camping.

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