As the Holiday Season approaches many families get together and we may even get to visit with some of the extended family we don't often get to see very much. This is a great time to not only tell family stories, but to write them down and to see if everyone in the family has the same story. Needless to say, when they are not the same, it can be hilarious. This is also a time of year when many folks are giving presents and some of us have made those wonderful genealogy albums or have written our family histories and are presenting copies to the other family members. (I did that last year and now they expect an update each year!) It is also a great time of year to take pictures of everyone and don't forget to label who is in those pictures (but be careful not to write too hard that the ink or the impression comes through). There are blue photo pens made that don't bleed through photos. I know several of us have photos of family...but we have no idea who those people are! I recently sent some photos of a school class for St Peter and Paul in the Soulard area out in hopes someone could identify even the year it might be...I am pretty sure these were from the early 1900s. Likely before 1910. It anyone on the list would like to see them, just drop me a line directly and I am happy to send you the jpeg to look at. This is also a time of year when many families go to visit the graves of those who have moved on...you might consider taking a wax crayon and some tracing paper to do a "rubbing". A rubbing is where you place the paper on the gravestone and take the crayon and just color over the top...you see the raised and indented parts and that is a rubbing. Here is URL that will explain it better than I just did! http://amberskyline.com/treasuremaps/t_stone.html I hope some of you found some great connections during our staged roll call earlier. I hope it gave some of you some of the clues you needed to get through some brick walls. (I know I made a very interesting contact with one of our list members and am hoping to get to the library here to do some more research and fill in even more missing pieces. I know she had some great information for me and I hope I can find out some more and we can piece together those missing connections). Have a great Holiday Season! Laura