quatrogatos4@hotmail.com happy happy HAPPY bday karen!!!! thanks for letting us know louise & toni! I was so happy to send greetings. Karen works so hard for the "group" but Louise gets the credit! My old age doesn't even remind ME when its my birthday! Hahhahaha I hope Karen has a good dinner with her family! Toni

HI Everyone, I had to laugh when I got Toni's message, you see what she meant was that when everyone saw Louise's Birthday greeting, several hit "Reply" to send me greetings, and they went to Louise instead of going on the List. But graciously Louise sent them on to me. SO she was getting my birthday greetings. Everyone please remember to hit "Reply All" when you want something to go to the list. I know it "sounded" like she was saying that I do all the work and Louise gets the credit for it, which I assure you she did not mean. Everyone knows how hard Louise works for our web pages, especially me. We wouldn't have the Obits or the Diaries or a myriad of other items, without Louise. Just a couple days ago I received the newest update for the Obits pages, and believe me this lady is totally committed to what she is doing. With this update we will have over 14,000 obits online. What a massive project this has been and it would have NEVER happened without Louise. The Obits pages are going to be broken down with this new update, there's just to many of each letter to leave them all on one page. Louise has broken them down by the first three letters of the surname. I think they will be easier to navigate and will load faster for you. Just wanted to clarify that. And I want all of our wonderful volunteers to know that I appreciate any work they do for our pages. I hope to be able to work on the obits later tonight and hopefully tomorrow. Today I'm on my way to Pueblo to see the Dr. (my social life anymore), and just hope the snow holds off till I get home. We are still working on the cemetery extraction project but I haven't heard from some of the volunteers since we started so I hope they will check in soon. Sheri and Brandi I really need to hear from both of you. I had really hoped to be done with that project by the end of the year, but I don't think we're going to make it. I did figure out how people WITHOUT Excel could help with the project so if any of you are interested, PLEASE contact me so we can get this wrapped up. It's such a simple solution, I just don't know why I didn't think of it before! Guess my only excuse is that I'm getting older! LOL I always say I've forgotten more than I ever knew LOL. I am supposed to be getting a new "super dooper" scanning program soon. If it works like its touted, We are going to have projects going full blast for the rest of the winter! Doesn't take much to make me happy, does it! It always makes me happy when we get new pages and data posted. But please keep in mind that I do have 3 counties and also try to do a lot for another County that I am a co-CC for, so my time has to be spread around among the 4, that's why all of my volunteers mean so much to me. One person can not do all there is needed to do. Right now, I have a wonderful volunteer, Sharon, in Pueblo County that is filming the Roselawn cemetery. Her office is near Roselawn so she goes everyday at lunch and takes photos and sends them to me. Each one of those photos have to go through a 6 step process on my end, before it can be posted to the internet, and right now she has submitted close to 300 photos. So that project has taken alot of time. But I am SO THANKFUL she is doing this. Next spring we hope to get together to do some of the rural cemeteries so get ready to hear more about the adventures we have. I heard from Jessie Todd the other day. Some of you met Jessie and her Mother Edith at our Gen-Con. As some of you know Edith was one of our very staunch supporters and had been doing Pueblo and Huerfano County research for quite a few years. We lost Edith one year ago, and I still miss her. She was a wonderfully warm and generous person. When her sons came home for the funeral they wanted to burn all of her genealogy papers but Jessie wouldn't allow it. Jessie knew that this was her Mother's life work. I'm sure they didn't mean any harm, they just didn't realize what it meant to Edith. Some families don't. Seems Jessie has committed to giving all of Edith's research to us in the next few months. She said she wants her Mother's work to live on through us. Isn't that wonderful? I know her Moma is smiling down on Jessie, I know Edith would want all of her work to be preserved for future generations. PLEASE folks, extend your THANKS to Jessie here on the list so I can forward them all to her. She needs to know how much we appreciate her generosity. Once we receive the data and do extractions, we will be donating the material to the local Historical Society so that it will all be preserved in at least two places, into the future. Which brings me to the next subject. I'm not going to live forever. So I need to Will all of my genealogy research to someone else. Yes, my children are interested, and they will receive all of our family records, but I have so much stuff here that they won't be using and I think you and I need to discuss this. I'm not being morbid, I'm being realistic. One of the Projects that we are with has a Legacy program and copies of all of our pages will be Willed to that. That's one reason I feel such an urgent need to get everything I have online. This is pretty massive since I've been doing research since 1967. So what about all the stuff we don't have online? Which means all the boxes and 4 4-drawer file cabinets, and various other places I have stuff stored (grin). Who wants it? Who will take receivership of whatever we don't have online? This has always been a big worry for me. I want my work to live on also. This is something each of you should consider for your own research also. And with that I am going to close for now and hope to hear all of your thoughts on the subjects here. You all take care and I'll leave the light on for you! (grin) Karen