Spent a few hours working on the family history project I have to do for my genealogy class last night. Luckily, not one but two of my family members have done some research so that's a big help. I'm still waiting for one to send me her stuff but the other one had given my parents some information and copies of some old family photos during a trip to BC a couple years ago. My mother was able to scan the photos and portions of a family tree for my paternal grandmother which was almost 100% complete for the five generations before me. Now I just have to try to fill out the information going back a few generations for the other three branches.
I can see why this gets addictive – seeing the paths that people took, getting glimpses into their lives (for instance, realising how many of my ancestors lived very close to where I am now before coming to Saskatchewan.) We also started working on Shea's side too although that's not officially part of the assignment. But it'll be nice to have all of that information compiled for some day when we have kids.
I wish I could find a journal or diary (or whatever the 1885 equivalent of a blog was! 
) that one of my ancestors had kept – it would be amazing to get a glimpse behind the birth dates and marriage dates and death dates to what everyday life was like. I saw one that a great aunt kept when she was at teacher's college in Regina in the 1930's (?) that was just about the most engrossing reading I've ever done.
(Oh, the photo is my great great grandfather John Brown who was born in Insch Scotland in 1840, came to Binbrook, Ontario (which is now a part of Hamilton which is about an hour and a bit from where I am now) in 1864 then moved west in 1885 and homesteaded at the site of our current farm on the edge of the Qu'Appelle Valley. But shhh, don't tell anyone – everyone thinks Saskatchewan is flat and boring!)
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