I've been busy, but enormously happy.
I know I haven't been blogging much lately and what I have posted hasn't exactly been quality stuff. I feel like I'm letting people down, especially the 6 people who unsubscribed from my blog in the last week. I'm sorry. I keep trying to make time to blog but I haven't been very successful. I'll try harder.
Two things are keeping me from blogging more. Those same two things are also putting a near constant grin on my face. The first is my puppy. How can you not smile at a puppy? I'd forgotten how much time/upkeep puppies take. It's like I've taken on a whole new hobby. It would be an understatement to say that the little guy has been a big distraction. He's pretty much turned my world upside down. He's too young to be expected to conform to my time schedule. Instead I'm having to conform to his. And he's quite demanding of my time. If I don't give him the time he needs he leaves me puddles, piles, and lots of chewed up stuff. :-(
The other thing that is keeping me from blogging more isn't a "thing" really. It's my new-found cousins. Boy oh boy did I hit the jackpot. Not only have they been friendly and interested in our shared family history, but they have been more than generous with their time and their collections of photos and stories. I keep intending to write up my good fortune in finding them and sharing some of the wonderful things they've shared with me but before I can they share even more stuff! I spent a whole day last weekend with 2 different families and drove around towns and sites that are significant to our family's history. And then at the end of the week I heard from yet a third of my second cousins! I can hardly keep up with the volume of info they are sharing with me!!! :-DDD If I grin any wider my face will split in two!
I intend to share more about my new cousins and my great fortunes as soon as I can. But like right now I'm sitting with >200 photos on my hard drive that were shared with me last weekend. They desperately need to be labeled/tagged before I forget who the people are in the pictures. That will take a good bit of time, time that would have been spent blogging. But I can't let them go unlabeled for long... you know how that goes. Before I know it I won't remember the names of the people and then the photos won't have much meaning.
Like a child, the puppy will grow up all too fast. The amount of time I have to spend on him will decrease and we will find a daily routine that allows me to have more blogging time. My cousins... I can only hope their interest in our family history continues and that we can develop even better relationships as we learn about our connections to each other. But like with most things, the excitement will likely wane as the novelty wears off and the volume of new information we share with each other will decrease as well. I must admit I'm enjoying the heck out of all the sharing we are doing in the mean time though! I am soooo very glad I made that last-ditch attempt to find some of my Lipa cousins before I actually started writing our family history. It would have been so very lackluster compared to what I'll be able to write now.
To all my blogging buddies who have been waiting to hear from me (email), I'm sorry. I'll get back to you soon. That's a promise. I'm sorry for not leaving more comments on your posts too. I'm still reading my feeds here and there as time allows I just haven't had the luxury of time for commenting. Did I mention that the mother board in my laptop died yesterday? Well, it did. Fortunately I took out a protection policy when I bought it from Circuit City. So now all I have to do is wait (7-10 days they tell me) for them to fix it and get it back to me. But being without it limits where and when I can be online :-(
So, don't give up on me!
Ah b-dee b-dee b-dee... that's all folks!
