Good Afternoon to one and all: Sorry to miss you in St. Louis, Dr. Bill; maybe you didn't get my e-mail with our cell phone number? I promised to check in on my return, so here I am. Actually I've been home a week---but SBC/Yahoo bought out Prodigy and the transition (for me at least) has not been a smooth one. Hubby and I took a barge trip down the Mississippi River from St. Louis to Memphis, and it was a lovely vacation, lots of good company, Don says he doesn't know when he's been so relaxed. Now the explanation for that might be that, for once, he didn't try to combine some business into our trip! We made stops in Chester, IL, Cape Girardeau, MO, and Paducah, KY (rained/fogged out of Caruthersville, MO, but as I understand it, there's only a little casino there, so no great loss). On board we had live entertainment several evenings; also several educational movies about the river, etc., with discussions afterwards. Definitely something we'd do again (on another part of the river, of course) but, also added to my list of things to do, is to go back to both St. Louis and Memphis to do more sightseeing! I haven't had much to say online the last couple of years, been busy collecting information, and now the hard part comes in trying to verify and find proof. The Grindstaffs were tough, but a nice lady in New York has finally, by process of elimination, determined on which of those branches we can hang Don's hat! We were very fortunate last fall to be in Germany and were able to locate and visit the small villages in the Palatinate area from which his ancestors emigrated, more of a thrill for me, I think, than for him. Before that we had the good fortune to make trips to Egypt (to see those Pyramids was on my list of things to do someday!) and a trip to the Philippines where we had hoped to find some of his long-lost relatives...and almost did, but found the last person carrying the name designs golf courses and was somewhere in the mideast working when we were there. We've also managed to obtain a lot of data on one of Don's maternal lines, and again need to find proofs. Now and again something will come my way about my lines; what's livening up our lives there is finding out that most of my maternal great-great-grandmother's children seem to have been without an official father! She first shows up on census reports in different counties in VA over the years under the name Elizabeth Lewis, first with two children, no husband listed; next census, two more children; next census, two more children. Family lore says her hubby's name was David. Guess I'm going to have to go down to Patrick Co., VA, and do some digging! Cousins down that way haven't been able to find a marriage record, but we have good guess that her maiden name was Bryant. Some cousins aren't too happy to hear me speculate that our Grandfather Lewis probably wasn't a Lewis at all! Oh, well. And the most important thing I have to share is that, at long last, we're going to be grandparents! Just this morning our daughter called to say the ultrasound seems to show a boy (60% sure). She's in Germany with her husband (U.S.Army), so our little friend will be born end of March, maybe April. Our first grandchild, the 11th for her husband's family. Guess where we're going next year? It was rather interesting to learn that the Army doesn't have a gynecologist/obstetrician available there, so our daughter (and two other ladies in her apartment building) are being sent to an obstetrician off-base. Shirley