The Search Has Began Again

Years ago, the day I passed my drivers test, my father dropped yet another bombshell on me. I had knew my Sister and Brother Pam and Gary since birth as I was around for both of those births. When I was around 8 years old I met my sister Terri for the first time and when I was around 13 I met my sister Kim for the first time. Strange growing up not not knowing your siblings, but it was par for the course for me. When I passed my drivers test my dad dropped one final bombshell on me, I had an older brother.

He is supposed to be about two years older than me, that would make him about 53 (or 23 depending if you believe my lie) and my Dad never wanted to reveal any information about this individual. Any time we started to look for them, he got very defensive for what ever reason. I respected his wishes and never started to search until after he passed away in 1999.

My Mom provided me a few tidbits of information like who the mother was, but all searches lead to a dead end. The name she had given me was a Carol Ann Pava, whose grandfather was a barber here in Morgantown.

We used Facebook to try to track down the information yesterday and have gotten some amazing information to assist us further on our search. Seems Carol moved to California in the early 60's and finished up High School there. The picture you see is her Sr Class Portrait from her yearbook. Thanks to my wonderful wife Michelle for signing up for an account that provided me this information. I posted the pic on Facebook and had it confirmed that this was her.

A poster named Sondra Nicholas is absolutely amazing and took that little bit of information and ran with it giving us all kinds of information to follow up on.

We have not found the sibling as of yet, but a big thank you to the people of the group Growing up in Morgantown for possibly pointing us down the path to complete our journey.

Have a great day.

Tuesday's Tidbits

* Well that dreaded day of the week that we hate so much is now behind us yet once again. It's time to start looking ahead to a Tuesday and you know what that means. Time for a Tidbits.

* 18,699. That is how many days that yours truly has been alive and kicking on this earth. I feel more and more blessed with each passing day.

* It has been 3,922 days since I made my walk at West Virginia University and earned my Degree in Geography. It's been going on 11 years and it just seems like yesterday.

* 2,523 days ago, on a Saturday evening, I took a young recently widows young lady with two kids our for a night on the town. It was dinner and a movie and her first date since her husband had passed two years earlier.

* 1,747 days ago at around 4:00 in the morning, I took this wonderful young lady out in the back yard and got down on one knee and proposed marriage.

* It was 1,285 days ago that we got in front of our closest family and friends and exchanged our marital vows at the Marilla Center.

* I have around 6,138 days to go until I retire, give or take a few hundred here or there.

* 324 more days left in this year, meaning that I have 324 more days of content to write before my Goodbye 2015 Blog posts.

* There are 318 more shopping days left to go until Christmas.

* I'm 294 days away from celebrating yet another birthday.

* 177 days away from celebrating my fourth wedding anniversary with my wonderful wife.

* We are only 96 days away from Brittany's Graduation from West Virginia University.

* There are only 38 more day to go until Spring. I'm starting to hear birds a singing and trees getting ready to start budding. I have a feeling this is going to be an early Spring, but I always think that and have been wrong before.

* This is my 3,953rd blog that I have written for Georges Journal since I first started writing it a little over a decade ago.

* The Hall Family Website is up and running, there has been a whole lot of progress made during this season of the weather season. I still have a long way to go.

* The 2014 family picnic was such a success that we're going to do it again. A lot of the prime dates that I wanted were already booked and paid for, so I had to act fast. This years 2015 Picnic will be on June 28th at Krepps Park once again. We have the big pavilion once again as we did last year, so this is the hard date some rain or come shine. BTW, there are only 138 days until that event =)

* We need to come up with some creative or craft ideas for the picnic, any creative people have any ideas? Maybe something to honor those who are no longer with us.

* No rumors yet for a 2015 date for Jimmy Buffett to appear in Pittsburgh, it is getting to that time of the year when I really need to be paying attention for an announcement.

* Waiting on planning to see if we are going to take a cruise in 2015, I would normally be booking and paying for it now however our work contract is up in May and I have to wait to see if I am still with the same company or will have to start working for someone else, hopefully here doing the same job. I hope I can hear something soon so we can start planning or make alternative plans.

* My Brother and Sister in Law Jim and Chris are hosting a dinner and a Family Movie Night this Friday at the Cassville Firehall. Admission is free and dinner is at 5:00 with the movie starting at 6:00. If you are looking for a good cheap time with some great people, I highly recommend this event.

* Have a great day

* Hi ho hi ho

Monday

I love my weekends, it's time to relax and there are really no schedules that we have to meet or anyplace that we have to be. So much for that, it's now time to stick our collective noses back on the grindstone for another fun filled week of working and doing what it is we do that allows us to live like we do. The weekend is over and it's time to get our butts back to work.

It was a semi productive weekend with my getting a little bit of work done to the Hall Family Tree and adding a few people and pictures. It has 157 people and 65 photos as of the time I am writing this. There is still a great deal of work that I need to do with it, but I'm piecing it together as slowly and as accurately as I can. I'm using multiple sources and have found out that My Mother's side of the family is better documented than my Father's side of the family was, or at least as far as anything available on the internet or online at the Census. I still haven't purchased any commercial products yet, so I am having a good deal of success without having to do so. There are a few things that I want to add to the site, like linking Find A Grave sites to a profile, so there is still a long way to go before I am even close to being done.

One thing I think it is time to do, is start planning the Summer Picnic for 2015. Last Years Picnic went very well, it was Christmas is July for Jean as we knew she was fighting a life threatening battle at the time, so maybe this years picnic can meet or exceed last years. I'll start looking around to reserve, I would like to get the same weekend time frame and the same location. I think that worked out very well last year. Anyone have any input, I feel doing this early will prevent any scheduling conflicts from anyone and set a hard date that people can schedule other things around. I know it's been a tough time for everyone in the family from the last picnic, maybe it's time to take a little bit of time out and enjoy each other.

Have a great day.

Hi ho hi ho

Sunday Morning Rambling

Here I sit yet once again in a quiet household, I am once again the first one to recover from getting knocked unconscious from that dreaded Sandman last night (he's undefeated BTW) and am up collecting my thoughts for the day. TV isn't on yet, but it should be.

Well all I can say is mission accomplished yesterday. I was able to make it to my Grandmothers Grave Site and get a few images of the tombstone. My Aunt Bonita in Alaska had been requesting a picture of it for a number of years and requested I try to get it for her on Friday. I honestly had no idea where we were going, where the tombstone was located (I've never been to the final resting place) and to add to that, there was snow on the ground and as you can see the marker is level with the ground. Talk about finding a needle in a Haystack. I did manage to both create and update her graves site on Find a Grave and upload the picture to Facebook for Bonita. I would say yesterday was mission accomplished.

In case anyone hasn't been paying attention, there is a football game this evening. The last two NFL team standing will vie for the Lombardi Trophy this evening. The NFC Champion and defending Super Bowl Champion Seattle Seahawks will take on the New England Cheaters who got to the super bowl with Deflate Gate. I'm cheering for Bruce Irvin to get his second ring as I am cheering for the Seahawks this evening. On a good note, Jerome "the Bus" Bettis  will be inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame in the 2015 Class.

Normal day of shopping for us, no winter storm that hit and devastated the area although I'm not complaining. Not sure if I have ever mentioned this before, but I Hate Snow.

Have a great day.

Saturday Morning Ramblings

Here I sit yet once again in a quiet household, I'm the first one to recover from that daily loss to the Sandman and am up collecting my thoughts and surfing the WWW. TV is not on and I noticed it is only 10° outside, so I might head back to bed and my electric blanket in the very near future.

Michelle got all of the W-2's done yesterday so she may be off for the weekend instead of having to go in. She thought she was going to have to work, but it looks like she may not have to now.

I ordered a book from Amazon this week and it arrived last night. Probably a skill I am going to need to brush up on a little to stay ahead of the game. I've also been looking at other avenues to export and present information. I just got a copy of Office 2013 installed here at home, it has the capabilities of doing dynamic heat maps that previous versions of office does not. It's pretty simplistic, but the end user has to have Office 2013 for it to work properly and all of my clients have Office 2010 installed. I'm ready for them when they do a system wide upgrade to Office although I'm hearing we are going to Office 365.

No plans for the day yet, I have done a lot of work on the Hall Family Tree this week. I currently have 124 people in the database and it is growing. I've been adding pictures and information about people as I come across it. A few trips to a graveyard or two with my camera will probably help solve a few of the mysteries and help me fill it in a little bit better. I've got a request from Alaska to get a picture of a certain tombstone, so I guess I can add that to my list of things to do. I've added her entry to Find a Grave and have even started to update a few entries there.

Have a great day and stay warm.

Hump Day

Two of those dreaded work days down and two to go after today, now all we have to do it get up over that dreaded noon time hump and we are on the downhill towards the weekend.

Once again, I'll be traveling to Pittsburgh this weekend as we tape the KDKA Steelers Trivia Show. I have two of the best team mates anyone could ever ask for, hopefully we can bring it home once again.

I have to say I am loving this weather, we actually had a rare mid week cookout last night for dinner. it was just hot dogs and french fries, but we did cook outside. I do love my charcoal Webber Kettle Grill. This thing is absolutely awesome.

I have to admit I have not done any scanning recently, nor have I done much work on the Hall Family Tree in the past week or so, but I'll get back to it some time in the very near future. It has a very long way to go, but no one ever said that this is an overnight project. I will accept any assistance on information that I can get.

Have a great day.