From Wiggling to Weaving and Wrapping

Well, the first disappointment was discovering there was no downloadable software program on FamilySearch (the correct name, by the way). It's either not there anymore, or it was on ancestry.com where I saw it. Obviously, I couldn't go to church at 12:30 in the morning to access ancestry.com for free, so I decided to do a Google search for "free downloadable family tree." The first result looked perfect! The URL http://www.myheritage.com/ said "Create, print, and publish your family tree. Completely free!" The web page was called MyHeritage. It turned out to be a genealogy software for Windows called "MyHeritage Family Tree Builder." I downloaded it and decided to investigate how user-friendly it was and what it could do. It was so easy! A Wizard guided me in entering my parents and us kids. I wanted to enter photos, so I looked in the User's Guide under "Handling Photos and Other Media." I found out the software has a photo handling tool. What a nightmare that turned out to be, though! Not because of the software (It's a snap!) but because of our old, junky scanner with its stupid, junky photo editing program! It wouldn't even let me save in "My Pictures!" I spent about two hours trying to find out where it was saving my pictures on the C: drive. Then I spent a couple more hours going through getting the photos scanned, saved, and imported into my project. But guess what?! When I finally went to save my project, I got a publish option to set up a site for my project! Therefore, you can view my project at http://www.sandrareid.myheritage.com/. The bad news is that the web site will only let you see part of my information without joining. The good new is, though, joining only takes a couple of seconds and is free. What do you have to lose?

I'm looking at page 54 of our Blue Book again where the 8Ws are. Oddly, I think I kind of stayed in the Wiggling stage, along with the Weaving stage, until I got to Wrapping. The reason I say this is because I thought I had more information to find while I was creating my family tree until I got to that surprise, unexpected place where I found out I could publish on MyHeritage. When I got to that point, my ideas to look for scrapbooking paper and a place to publish went out the window. I was thrilled with what I had! I can keep adding to my family history, and all of my family can easily access it. I really like how I can store photos in there also. I'm the lucky one in the family to have all the family pictures, and everyone is always wanting copies. There are more cool features that I will check out at a later date.

Well, time for a short breather! Be back shortly!

Sandy