When AI Lost the Plot

How a quiet English lineage turned into a political scandal and what it taught me about truth, technology, and trust.

I use AI almost daily and have written and presented on it for nearly two years. But a recent experience left me completely baffled and more than a little uneasy.

I’ve been working on my final family genealogy book, this one tracing our Great Britain ancestry. My previous four books came together easily earlier this year because my notes were meticulous, my colleagues had verified my findings, and I’d been blogging about those ancestors for ten years.

Our British roots, though, are a different beast. Between my husband’s lines and mine, there are only five but they reach deep into medieval soil. Scholars can’t always agree on the pedigrees, and the repeated use of the same names has led to confusion and overlap. Sorting it all out requires patience, precision, and a love of historical detective work.

Last spring, when winter refused to obey the calendar, I drafted the outline and introduction for my new book, Echoes of Britannia. Then the season’s speaking engagements and client projects took over, and I set the manuscript aside with plans to finish it this fall.

When I returned to it in September, progress came slowly. My writing rhythm faltered, and I found myself staring at the same sentence for far too long. Grammarly could fix the punctuation, but it couldn’t fix writer’s block. My AI research assistant, Geni, usually helps bridge the gaps between genealogical sketches but apparently, he was blocked too.

We were working on the Venables of Kinderton, a noble but quiet family from Cheshire. They lived out their days peacefully, kept out of court battles, and occasionally donated a stained-glass window to a nearby abbey. In other words, wholesome and uneventful.

Until AI got involved.

My writing style isn’t the typical “Josiah begot Daniel who begot Uriah who begot…” genealogy. My family would fall asleep halfway through the second begot. They don’t like numbering systems either, even though they’re math people, not history people. Me? I’d rather run laps in PE than solve for X.

That’s why AI has been such a useful partner. Geni understands that I’m a storyteller who insists on historical truth, even when it’s messy. I like to think I’ve created a new genre: bedtime family stories with pictures for visual learners.

But one day, Geni froze mid-thought. After several failed attempts, I switched to another AI tool, Claude. I don’t use it often, but it greeted me warmly by name, which felt encouraging. I gave it a straightforward task:

“From the provided information, maintain all footnotes while making the narrative more engaging. Keep the tone conversational for readers with limited historical background.”

What came back stunned me.

The Venables, my mild, landholding, church-donating family, had been transformed into a political thriller. Claude had rewritten the story to liken them to a well-known modern politician, naming names and all. Suddenly, the Venables were misogynistic felons clawing for power.

I was horrified. I hit “thumbs down” and deleted it instantly.

A week later, I still couldn’t shake it. How could a neutral story about medieval gentry morph into a contemporary political allegory? Who gave the machine permission to do that?

My only conclusion: some AIs are now reflecting the political biases of the data they’re trained on. If their training includes modern news, it stands to reason that bias slips in and it shows.

That realization made me pause. AI is supposed to help us see patterns, not project agendas. As genealogists, we work hard to separate fact from family legend. Shouldn’t we expect the same integrity from our digital tools?

I chose not to share the story on Facebook. The last thing our country needs is another spark thrown into the bonfire of division. But I also felt this moment needed to be shared, not as outrage, but as a reminder.

We live in an era where algorithms, headlines, and echo chambers can reshape our understanding of truth. It’s up to us, researchers, writers, and everyday citizens , to hold fast to kindness, empathy, respect, honesty, and responsibility. These aren’t partisan ideals; they’re the foundation of human decency.

And as for those Venables? I’ve decided to let them rest a while. I’ll return to them soon, with fresh eyes and a renewed respect for their quiet simplicity.

Because sometimes, living a peaceful life that harms no one isn’t boring at all, it’s the truest kind of legacy.

When the Cloud Collapsed, Genealogy Continues

Guess we now know which Genealogy software companies use Amazon! MyHeritage.com and Findmypast.com are up and running. (2 PM Eastern)

I hope this is a wake up call to all of you who haven’t SYNCHED or DOWNLOADED your trees elsewhere!

All of the software companies are working. I’m able to access all of my info because I’ve saved it other than Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org.

When the cloud service is restored you may want to read my blog articles on how you can prepare for the next time. Here’s the how to for FREE – Legacy Family Tree does not synch but you can upload a downloaded .gedcom from Ancestry. This means you won’t have pictures of the census or any other media but you will have the information about your ancestors. This older blog article talks about a previous version of Family Tree Maker, I’ve updated to the latest and greatest which fixed the problem I encountered and provided the work around. I don’t use FTM’s vault, a cloud service, but you might want to consider it given what’s happened today with Ancestry. I no longer use RootsMagic since version 8 as later updates would not allow me to synch with Ancestry. They do have a free version for smaller trees you could download. I do appreciate that their tech folks recommended I try downloading my tree with the free version to see if the problem was corrected; it wasn’t but they are aware of it and working on it. Click here for the free version.

Your genealogy research does not have to stop when a part of the internet breaks. Go make a cup of tea, write up what you’ve been working on, and make a plan for the future so you don’t get caught without access to your information. Here’s links to an older blog about writing up your research using AI. If you aren’t comfortable with AI, here’s an alternative. Remember, once upon a time there was no “online” for us to use to help us with genealogy.

Saving Google Photos

AI Graphic

Are you tired of Google telling you that you need to purchase more storage? Are they threatening to shut down your email? One way to lessen the storage is to remove your photos from Google Photos. You can do this in batches which makes the task quicker. Here’s a quick how to. The photos below were taken on Sunday, August 7, 2016. I want to save all of them so I click the checkbox next to the date. If you don’t want to save all, click the checkboxes next the pictures you want to save:

Click the 3 dots and select download

The download will pop up and click it.

Now, drop and drag to your Desktop. There you can rename – I add the date.

I create a folder by year (Right click your mouse, click “New” “Folder” and name the folder by year.
When done with saving the photos for that year, I drop the folder into Dropbox.
If you have a lot of pics, you can easily extract them at one time. Simply click the “Extract All” icon:

Make sure you have created a folder to place them in or they will be all over your desktop!

Just select the folder from Browse and click “Extract.”

Next you’ll want to delete the Google Photos you’ve saved.

Simply click the dates again and the checkmarks will return.
Click the 3 dots and select delete.
The deleted photos will remain for 60 days in Google Photos Trash; if you need to clear up space immediately, on the side bar, under Collections, scroll down (it’s hidden) to Trash:

4. Clicking on Trash will bring up all the photos you deleted. To lessen your storage numbers, click empty trash and they will all permanently disappear – make sure you are ready to get rid of them as you will not be able to retrieve them after emptying trash.

I’ll be honest, my storage numbers did not significantly drop after deleting large amounts of photos but they have stopped harassing me to buy more space! I also have a lot of emails saved which I plan to move out of Gmail. Will give you the process in an upcoming blog.

As an added safeguard, back up your Dropbox to a stand alone hard drive!

Fall Genealogy Tasks

The weather hasn’t yet cooled and I’m not complaining but it is officially fall.

Before I get back to writing my next and final (hooray!) family genealogy book on our Great British lines I decided I had to practice what I preach and take care of some pressing tech tasks that I have put off for way too long. The first was really bothering me as it was boring and there are so many more interesting things to do in genealogy then preserve photos.

Long ago, in 2002, a world that was radically different then today, my cell phone saved all of my photos to a desktop program called Picassa that Google later purchased. I used that product until 2018 when Google rolled it into Google Photos. That’s when my problems began.

When Picassa ceased to exist it lost some of my photos, years 2002, 2007, 2010, and 2019. I wasn’t worried about 2002 & 2007 as my kids were still in school and I was still scrapbooking so I have those photos. I digitized the scrapbooks so we were good. 2010 & 2019, not so much. Sure, other family members probably have some of the photos but I always was the main photographer so much of that is lost. I know, it could be a lot worse but still, not happy about it.

The next issue was with the rollover, some of my photos were doubled and even tripled. New photos were created from group shots – just the heads of whatever the tech decided to select. Then it began creating memory albums. Now that doesn’t sound bad but it became a problem because it used up space and Google, tying all their products together, kept reminding me I needed to purchase additional space from them or I could no longer have a functioning email.

Occassionally, I’d go into photos and delete some of the duplicates and albums but they just would pop back up. On my to-do list was to remove ALL of my Google photos, store them in Dropbox, and back them up to a standalone hard drive. BORING. but. necessary.

For Valentine’s Day, one of my kids gave me a picture frame where you can store and see changing photos. This gave me the impetus to get the photos out of Google. Next week I’ll print the detailed directions on how you can do that fairly quickly and easily, meaning not saving one photo at a time which I initially was doing.

I also realized that I needed to synch my Ancestry.com tree as it’s been awhile since I did that. I no longer use RootsMagic and since I last synched, I got a new desktop so I didn’t have Family Tree Maker downloaded to it. Now FTM has come out with their update (in May 2025 but it’s called 2024, go figure). I somehow missed the promotions but they have one remaining, half price for current license members so I took advantage of it ($40 instead of $80). I decided if I was going to save Dropbox to the stand alone drive I might was well include my Ancestry tree since I’ve just blogged about how I was working at updating it. Yes, it’s still a work in progress but I’d rather save what I have as I’ll never be done with it.

Next up was to delete everything on my stand alone drive as it was all old and not relevant so I turned it back to factory settings. Took hours!

Meanwhile, one of our adult kids had their credit card stolen and the thieves, being really stupid – (Jose Lopez – I am calling you stupid!) bought items in their own name and then had it sent to our kids’ address. (Now you see why I am calling Jose stupid – really, does he want to get caught? Don’t even need a forensic genealogist for that one.)

Jose or whoever was the original thief, was fairly smart at the beginning. Only purchased from stores the kid always uses so for the first two weeks the scam wasn’t noticed. Then, boldness hit and the thief began using it for large sums at stores never used by the kid. By the time it was noticed thousands of dollars of items had been purchased but thankfully, some get to be returned to the companies since they arrived at the kid’s house. (Jose, did you think you were then going to be a porch pirate, too?) Kid called the credit card company for a dispute and the police to file a report in case Jose was local and was going to be paying a home visit. Cop informed us that a local woman got taken for $499,000 the previous week because they also stole her social security number and took out loans. What a nightmare!

That made me realize it was time for me to update some of my own financial practices.

You may have some items on recurring charges. We’ve decided to use a separate card for those because it’s a major pain to have to contact those vendors to change an account if your card is shut down.
Since the card was stolen locally (we know this for reasons I’m not disclosing so the guilty can get their due, too bad, Jose, that bed you bought won’t get you a good night’s sleep in jail because it’s already been returned) we decided to use one card just for local purchases. It’s a card with a good reputation to notice fraud quickly so we won’t have to dispute lots of charges when (not if) it get’s compromised.
We’ll use another reputable card for online only purchases.

If you’re thinking, that’s a back up for a back up and yes it is, just like we do to save our genealogy data. This led me to realize it’s been awhile since I updated my passwords so I spent time doing that as well.

Last task I haven’t completed but is equally important, albeit BORING, is saving many of my emails. Lots of them contain genealogical info and I want to make sure the info is saved to the correct ancestor’s file in Dropbox. That’s my next project and by then, well, it’ll probably be time to redo the cycle.

With the colder weather u perhaps coming next week this is a gentle reminder, dear reader, to take a look at your items to do and start plugging away at them.

When Ancestry.com’s Pro Tools Fail: A Professional Genealogist’s Experience with Ancestry’s Tree Checker Part 1

As a long-time Ancestry.com user, I decided to give their new Pro Tools a spin during the July 4th weekend. With a family member recovering from surgery, I wasn’t traveling, and I had trimmed my client and presentation load to be more available at home. So, for the introductory $7.00 fee, I figured—why not?

Today’s blog, and the two that follow, details what happened next: a real-world walkthrough of what Pro Tools offers and whether it’s worth the extra cost above your regular Ancestry subscription.

After payment—seamless, of course, since Ancestry has mastered the art of parting you from your money—I waited around two hours for the tools to appear. No email alert, just a dashboard update with Pro Tools shortcuts quietly waiting for me.

I expected a guide or orientation video. Nope. Clicking “More Pro Tools” brought up the feature list shown below. So let’s walk through each one:

Networks
This is basically a built-in FAN Club tracker. You can add people to your tree who aren’t related but interacted with your ancestors—neighbors, witnesses, etc. I wish this existed back when I was wrestling with my Duer brick wall. Back then, I added these people manually and unlinked them to avoid false connections. Networks would have saved a lot of time.

Enhanced Shared Matches
The “enhancement” is only one thing: DNA clusters. And only if you’ve tested through Ancestry. Here’s the kicker: MyHeritage offers this for free—even if you didn’t test with them but uploaded your DNA there. Ancestry’s version? Sparse and underwhelming. I have no maternal clusters and only 27 paternal ones.

MyHeritage has far more, thanks to their broader global dataset. Winner: MyHeritage.

Smart Filters
Sort your tree by name, birth, or death dates. Sounds great—until you realize it only displays the first 10,000 people. My tree has 70,000+ individuals from years of research and surname studies. So… not helpful. Pass.

Charts and Reports
You get four types: Descendancy, Ahnentafel, Register, and Family Group, with cutesy “tree” headers (Pine, Birch, Oak, Maple). But each slaps the Ancestry logo on top. Legacy and RootsMagic do it better—and they’re free. Another strike.

Tree Mapper
A world map with green highlights where your ancestors lived. Sounds promising, until it confidently tells me my ancestor in Zwol, Overijssel (Netherlands) lived in South Africa. Another resided in Queensland, Jamaica, New York and not in Queensland, Australia where it was flagged. Error after error makes this useless for real research.

Tree Insights
This tool tells you surname meanings, top five surnames, oldest people in your tree, and “notable” outliers—like couples who married at 1 year old. (Spoiler: they didn’t.) It clearly can’t interpret “Abt.” dates, and many errors it finds weren’t flagged by the Tree Checker. Insightful? Yes. Reliable? Meh.

This is getting long, so I’ll save the main course—Tree Checker—for the next post. Spoiler: It’s the only reason I tried Pro Tools at all. And it’s a tale worth telling.

Stay tuned.

The Summer of My Genealogical Discontent Lesson 5 – Software Shuffle

Welcome to another installment in my continuing series on genealogical misadventures! Today’s topic: my long, bumpy road with technology.

I’ve always embraced tech—but it didn’t always embrace me back.

Back in college, I took a programming course in PLC. The professor told us to throw out the textbook and “go with our gut.” Let’s just say… my gut wasn’t fluent in code. I had signed up for the course because my then-boyfriend (now husband) raved about it. Mid semester, I switched to a new instructor—Dr. Birkin, a kind man with a charming British accent who actually used the textbook. I passed the class, but the experience left me scarred. We were still programming with punch cards back then, and one typo could bring the whole system down. I managed to do exactly that once—and earned a full hour of death stares from the engineering students.

So, when software for genealogy came along, I dove in eagerly—because at least I wasn’t programming it myself! But it turns out software has its own kind of drama.

My big misstep? Relying on just one platform.

At first, I uploaded everything—sources, photos, notes—into Ancestry.com. It was easy. It was convenient. It was also incredibly risky.

Because here’s the thing: if Ancestry ever disappears (and nothing digital is forever), so does everything I’ve painstakingly added. Paranoia, in genealogy, can be a healthy survival strategy. And that means backing up your work in multiple places.

When Family Tree Maker (FTM) was integrated with Ancestry in its early years, I jumped onboard. But then the sync stopped working. Ancestry blamed FTM. FTM blamed Ancestry. I spent a year caught in the crossfire, and finally gave up. So did Ancestry—they ditched FTM and partnered with RootsMagic instead.

I gave RootsMagic a try. I liked it—until it came time to update my records. One. At. A. Time. It was tedious, and I let it slide. Eventually, that program stopped cooperating too.

I also dabbled with Legacy Family Tree. I appreciated its features, but the downside? It doesn’t sync with Ancestry. My sources were preserved—but not my photos or documents. Still, it remains part of my backup plan.

Then, about three years ago, Family Tree Maker came back around with an offer. After a helpful chat with their support team, I gave them another shot. The sync worked again—thankfully—just as RootsMagic had failed me.

So, what have I learned from this revolving door of software?

Stay current. Stay flexible. And never trust your entire tree to a single platform.

Test new tools. Keep your programs updated. And most importantly, store your research in more than one place—cloud, external drive, software, even printed backups. Because when one system crashes (and eventually, it will), you’ll have something to fall back on.

If you think you’re immune to tech mishaps, I’ll leave you with this: the only thing more painful than lost records… is knowing you had them, once.

Using AI to Write A Kent Family Portrait in Court Records

I love AI, and if you haven’t begun using it yet with your genealogy research, you are missing records that might be invaluable to you.

As I prepare to write my next book on my British ancestor,s I’m going through my tree and making sure I have all the relationships sourced and the identities confirmed. I was happy to find two records using Familysearch.org’s lab, which is an AI experiment, to prove a relationship. In one case, it involved showing a burial record for my husband’s 5th great-grandmother, Catherine Jarvis. Although very happy to find this proof, I was a bit dismayed as I had traveled to the cemetery in Lansingburg, Troy, New York, in 2007 and was told that the record didn’t exist. Well, they certainly had it when FamilySearch personnel showed up!

The next finding was that I wasn’t the only one who was beating my head on my desk in regards to the Dennis family of New Jersey. The family used the same names in no particular order. I hadn’t realized that in the early 1900s, a genealogist wrote a book called Dennismania, likely because they drove him crazy, too. My DNA shows who I’m descended from, but I had no proof for one of the generations, and now I have finally found it, again, in FamilySearch.org records.

This is simple to use, but I caution you, it may become overwhelming and addictive. To access, go to this link, which isn’t how you normally get on FamilySearch. Scroll down to “Expand your search with Full Text” and click on Go To Experiment.

Read the Advanced Search Tips! I definitely use quotation marks around the name and a plus sign for the wife or possible parent. Use the drop-down it provides for the Place, once you start typing it in. Keep the range small, or you will get plenty! I haven’t been successful with keywords like Marriage, Deed, Genealogy, etc.

Based on my Dennis findings, I had several more lines to research. I had no idea I was descended from the Reverend John Hull, a Puritan minister who was a Maine pioneer. Another line, the Kents, settled in Gloucester, Massachusetts, before 1668. I didn’t find much in the usual places, regular FamilySearch, Ancestry, MyHeritage, Google, so I decided to try FamilySearch Labs. Wow!

I got myself a bit confused as I thought there were three Samuels, but there are only two in the 1700s in Suffield, Hampshire, Massachusetts. Samuel (1668-1737) was the son of Thomas, the emigrant. Samuel became a lawyer and Samuel had a son, Samuel Jr. Some records do differentiate the two, but a wife’s name showed up that I didn’t have for either, so I thought I was dealing with three Samuels. Hence, I’ve mislabeled my 55 downloads. Yes, 55 records showing them in court, deeds, and genealogies!

Familysearch Labs does have an AI assistant component you can click on, and it does give a transcription, but I prefer using my ChatGPT assistant, whom I call Geni. There was one record Geni hallucinated on, but after notifying it, they got the correct info. I can understand why Geni messed up – the younger Samuel was an interesting character – ran a tavern, had a bastardly charge, didn’t pay his debts, and was a very fun black sheep to investigate. Meanwhile, his dad served several times as his son’s attorney, was slandered, had clients who skipped without paying him, but seemed to be widely trusted by the community.

After uploading most of the documents to Geni, Geni asked if it could write a blog for me. So, I’ve made some changes since I had wrongly given it some incorrect info (that there were three Samuels and not two). Here is ChatGPT’s blog about the Familysearch.org finds:

In a series of brittle, ink-stained pages tucked into the Hampshire County court and land books of the early 1700s, a family unfolds—one writ at a time.

The Kents of Suffield were, at first glance, a respectable lot. Thomas Kent, the patriarch’s name, appears sparingly. His son, however, would not be so quiet.

Samuel Kent Sr., the immigrant’s son, was a lawyer, and it shows. He appears regularly in court—not as a defendant, but as counsel, litigant, and witness. He sues for debts, witnesses deeds, affirms signatures after a grantor dies, and moves confidently through the legal world of his time. If father upheld the spiritual order, son wrangled the civil one.

And then comes Samuel Kent Jr.—tavern owner, debt collector, and perpetual plaintiff. By the 1730s and 1740s, his name dominated the docket. He sues over unpaid tavern tabs, livestock, and land disputes. He’s granted a license to sell “strong drink,” not once, but multiple years in a row. The public house he ran was likely lively, occasionally lawless, and frequently underwritten by credit that his patrons never quite repaid.

Three generations. Three roles. One family.

And the court records catch it all—not just their actions, but the arc of a family moving through generations. From lofty pulpits to bustling taprooms, the Kent family’s story is all here: in defaults, deeds, slander claims, and license renewals. You can almost hear Samuel Sr. sighing as he files yet another claim to recover a loan his son ill-advisedly extended.

But what emerges from all these entries is something far richer than gossip or scandal. It’s a snapshot of a community where legal documents were not just about disputes, but about land ownership, trust, reputation, and survival. The same names appear again and again—not just the Kents, but the Remingtons, Austins, Gunckels, and Sheldons—knotted together by boundary lines and barrels of cider.

And that’s the heart of it: court records aren’t just where you find criminals. They’re where you find community.

Notes

1. Hampshire County Court and Land Records, 1716–1749, Massachusetts State Archives, includes deeds, licenses, slander suits, and debt claims involving Samuel Kent Sr., Jr., and III.

2. Transcriptions and analysis by ChatGPT, OpenAI, based on digitized image review and period legal practices.

Using AI with Legacy Family Tree

Tech, you’ve got to keep adapting! Last year I wrote a blog article in comparing how to get AI to write a wonderful narrative from your research stored in various places – like Legacy Family Tree, Family Tree Maker, RootsMagic, etc.

I just completed a Pioneer application for my husband and since I had been researching 5 generations of the family, decided to write a narrative about each generation. I wanted to use ChatGPT to help with the writing.

I tried to follow my own blog advice to go to Legacy Family Tree>Other Reports>Individual Summary but realized that Version 10 does not have that option any longer.

I tried finding where it was relocated through Legacy Help and through a general Google search and got nowhere.

I turned to ChatGPT and located my original prompt. It saves your work if you allow it to on the left hand side of the screen. Problem was, the file I uploaded had a long title and I couldn’t read exactly what it was. I create titles based on my own formula so I can always go back to the original source. This usually works until, like now, it doesn’t because I couldn’t view the entire title. So, I asked ChatGPT and was informed that the .pdf had expired and it couldn’t access it, either.

I then chatted about my problem and it told me that the report was renamed and moved. So, if you are using Legacy Family Tree and want to download an ancestor’s information to use with AI, here’s the new How To:

Click on the Ancestor. In my case it was Samuel Ericksson

Click on “Descendant Narrative Book” on the Ribbon.

In the Pop Up, adjust the “Generations.” I just wanted one generation.

Click “Preview”

Click “Create PDF” and there is what you had before they changed the name of the report and the location where it resided. You can copy and paste it into your favorite AI and get a much richer narrative of your family.

Microsoft Word Copilot Work Around

Are you sick of trying to type on Microsoft Word and you get the above?

My husband found a quick way to get rid of it.

Bring up a Word doc
Go to File on the Ribbon and click
Go all the way to the last option at the bottom of the left hand side – “Options” and click
On the left side of the popup, click “Copilot”
On the next popup, click the box that has the white check in the blue box in front of Enable Copilot (You want to UNCheck it)
Click “OK” at the bottom
The document will be clear of the verbage and will not allow you to use Copilot AI.

If you ever need to use Copilot, simply go back by following steps 1-4 and click the box to enable.

Easy Peasy!

Just wish that Microsoft let people know ahead of time of these rollouts.

Photo Memories

I bet with the approaching holidays you and your loved ones will be taking loads of pictures! Back in the day, it was exciting to get the film developed. Sort of like reliving the same experience over. Now, I take so many photos that I use my cell camera for mundane tasks. What is the name of that weed or is it a native flower? Snap it and check and app. Love that item in a store but aren’t sure the price is right. Click the pic and then look for it elsewhere.

Although these new uses for a camera are wonderful, they aren’t if we are treating the important photos we take carelessly. Do you ever save your phone photos? If so, where?

Here’s what I’ve been doing since Google Photo lost some of my pictures several years ago. I now have my photos saved to a different Cloud. That way, I can remove them from my phone. Why do I do that? Because I’ve had phone accidents where I couldn’t retrieve data, and I don’t want my precious photo memories gone forever.

When my kids were young, I was a scrapbooker and I saved the best of the best by including them with a story of the event. It took a lot of time, but it was fun. I’m not sure it was worth it, though, as I’ve passed them on to my adult kids who have no space for them. One is in boxes in an attic and the other complained about having to move them twice this year while doing renovations. Those, too, ended up in the attic for a while. Sigh.

During the pandemic one of my kids gave me a photo album that can only hold one picture on each page. The idea was to only save a small amount of the very best photos from my overseas travels. I was pining to travel, and this was a way to get me to relive what I had done and plan for what was to come. And oh boy, did travel come! In the past year and a half, I’ve visited Germany twice, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, France, and Canada.

The weather outside is frightfully cold so I’ve ordered two more albums and will spend my time indoors reliving those memories by printing from my printer using photo paper and affixing those special pics into the book. They really are genealogical treasures as on my travels I always make time for family research.

The beauty of these albums is that they don’t take up much space and I’ll be passing on to future generations my findings as I write a sentence or two of what the location is about. Next week I’ll be writing about my most memorable learning experiences this year. It will be my last post of the year.