May Genealogy To-Do List

First, what I managed to do in April:  I finished the new family tree for the wedding that will happen the end of May.  Yay!!  I learn something each time I do one of these.  And I get distracted by trying to find the family tree image I want to be able to create: I think it would look like a bow-tie chart except the very middle would be the new couple not a child, with then the groom’s and bride’s families expanding out on each side.  I also want to figure out a way to make something like this visually appealing and keep thinking of scrapbooking as one possibility.  Or learning enough computer graphics programing to make my own bow-tie report that could be filled in with any group of people.  Five years ago, Janet Hvorka’s site for family charts included an option to make your own and save it as a pdf (so only 8.5 x 11 but you could include graphic backgrounds and save the tree information).  This is no longer available which is too bad for me.  I had managed (for the first family wedding that I wanted to do it for) to create just such a bow-tie and save it on a decorative tree background.

In May I want to:

1.  combine the timelines a cousin and I are working on of where the various family lines were living from the time they each emigrated to the U.S.  We’ve each done work on our own family lines, but want to combine them.  These are lines where various siblings and cousins migrated and lived near each other.  With any luck we’ll get a good list and be able to create a map showing each family’s locations across time.

2.  listen to all of the audiobook version of Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land which Judy gave good reviews.

3.  begin to pull together the items I want to look for in Salt Lake City.  Judy and I are seriously planning a trip to the Family History Library in the Fall.  So I need to create lists and tables of what is most easily available there rather than online.  This will of course be an ongoing project until we actually go, but including it here will get me started.