Gratitude and Thanksgiving

I can’t believe it’s almost Thanksgiving! It’s my favorite holiday, and I am looking forward to spending time celebrating everything I am thankful for with extended family this week.

I have a gratitude project I will be completing over the next few days. Instead of giving gifts for Christmas, my siblings and I, along with our parents, always share what we call “Christmas Memories.” One of us is in charge each year and assigns a topic for that year’s memories. Each family member then writes about the assigned topic and submits their story to the sibling in charge, who compiles, prints, and mails the memories to each member of the family by Christmas. We have been doing this for years, and each of us has binders full of these memories. It has been a great way to collaborate on the history of our family.

This year, my sister asked each of us to complete a gratitude list of one thing we were grateful for every week of the year. I do try to record three things I am grateful for each day, but I haven’t been very good at adding a weekly item to the template my sister provided. This week I will go back and fill in the template so I can submit it to her. I’m excited to read everyone’s gratitude lists on Christmas Day!

One of the things I’ve been really grateful for this year is that I have been able to spend a lot of time doing something I love – researching my family history, helping others with theirs, and sharing my experiences with you! Making connections across generations brings me great joy, and I feel lucky every day that I have the time and access to the tools and resources that make it all possible!

This week I was able to complete a client project in which the objective was to locate original church records for family members from Baumholder, Germany. I was thankful for this opportunity because it gave me additional practice abstracting German records, which is something that is required for accreditation in the Mid-Atlantic region. I was able to locate the records in an unindexed collection at FamilySearch, and it was rewarding to discover how the collection was organized and then have success locating each requested document.

I’m also thankful for the association I have had over the last several months with Nicole and Diana of Family Locket. I have learned so much by participating in their Research Like a Pro Study Groups and through serving as a research intern and guest blogger at Family Locket. My most recent post was just published this week, in which I shared the conversation I had with Robert Friedman, executive director of The Permanent Legacy Foundation. I was excited to learn and impart more about their mission to “preserve and provide perpetual access to the digital legacy of all people for the historical and educational benefit of future generations.” I have begun curating my own archives at Permanent.org and I’m excited to share my experience as I go along.

What are you grateful for this year? I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving remembering and celebrating those things with family and friends!