Family Tree

I'm working from home these days, which means I have a lot of free time on my hands. So today I was productive and scanned a ton of old family pictures and put them into www.geni.com. Its an online family tree and you can invite your family to join. You can only see your family related to you by blood or marriage. Its really neat because you can add pictures, write stories, and chart out your family history. Once other relatives are on the tree you can also send messages to each other, etc.

Andre and I have been in a competition to see who can get more ancestors on the tree. We're pretty close. I have mine going back to 1647, but he has a lot more family members.

Putting down all the history makes it come alive in a way. I'd heard the old family stories before, but it seems more real when you write down the names of 12 kids in a family and then put in the story about how all but 2 died from illness. And discovering who people were and what they did with their lives. Andre says I'm a nerd, but I think its cool.

So, since you can add pictures, I set aside my competitive nature and added some of Andre's relatives on the de la Reza side and their pictures (much thanks to Susie for the pictures). This is Andre's great grandfather Jorge de la Reza. I love this picture. He looks so happy and optimistic--I can really see Andre in him.

This is a picture of my great-grandmother Florence Vance. She's the one on the left. She was a tax assessor. At my grandfather's (Bid) funeral several relatives I didn't know said I favored her. I love the pictures that show the clothes back then. We don't know who the other lady was.

Anyhow, the family tree is really cool. I tried to send an invitation to join the tree to everyone in the family (mine and Andre's), but it kind of looks like junk mail so you may not have received it. If you haven't and you want to jump on let me know and I'll invite you again.

This is from Geni: "Geni lets you create a family tree through our fun simple interface. You can expand your tree by adding relatives' email addresses. They will be invited to join your tree and can add other relatives. Your tree will continue to grow as relatives invite other relatives. Geni is private. Only the people in your family tree can log in to your tree and your profile. Geni will not share your personal information with third parties. We will not sell your email address or spam you. Users control which communications they would like to receive from us."