Family Weekend

 My wife and I drove over to Chandler, AZ from San Diego yesterday to join our eldest, daughter, her husband, and three daughters for her oldest daughter, Jamie's, daughter's 2nd birthday.  If I haven't made it clear, it is our great-granddaughter, Avery's, 2nd birthday! Yesterday was Avery's actual birthday, so last night we celebrated it with her opening a few presents.  Saturday will be the "Big Party", with several of her school friend, cousins and other family gathering at a nearby park for the celebration.  We will be joined by Jamie's husband's family, who also live in the Phoenix area.

Avery is quite fortunate in that, in addition to four sets of grandparents, she has two and a half sets of great-grandparents who are still alive.  I only knew one great-grandparent, my mother's grandmother, Grandma Jane.  She didn't like the city tap water, so as a young teenager, my weekly job was to go over to her house and pump her a bucket of water from her backyard well.  Following that, we normally would sit and chat for a few minutes.  Those are great memories.  Unfortunately, her husband, passed away young from appendicitis, so I never got to know him.  He was serving his second term at the time as Sheriff.
  
Jamie's husband, Justin, is very fortunate in that one of his relatives had in their possession a box full of research that had been done by a cousin of Justin's grandfather.  He managed to track down that compilation and obtain possession of it.  I entered a lot of the data in my Family Tree Maker (FTM) program; but having entered about five generations of ancestors, I decided that I would save the rest for him to do.  This weekend I brought an old copy of FTM, with me along with a GEDCOM of he and Jamie's family lines that I had prepared.  Last night we loaded the program and GEDCOM on his computer and I gave him a very short tutorial on how to enter the remainder of the information and about using FTM.  Hopefully, today I will have the opportunity to monitor him while he makes a few entries. 

He and Jamie seem to have an interest in their family history, so I am happy to do what I can to reinforce that.

I had hoped to include a few photos of last night's events in this blog; but forgot my camera cord!  Hopefully, today I can borrow one from Justin and include them in tomorrow's blog.  Guess I need one of those new Wi-fi capable cameras!

Our daughter just called and we are meeting in hotel lobby for breakfast in 15 minutes, so got to run!