Are the days of impatiently waiting for the postman to deliver a letter that you’re eagerly awaiting over? Sadly I think they ‘almost’ are. Thanks largely to email, the days of receiving a letter in the post has almost completely died. Honestly I cannot remember when I last received something that wasn’t a bill, a letter from the bank offering me a new credit card, or details of what’s happening in my area from my local council.

But for the past two weeks I have been eagerly checking my letterbox daily.

So what has got me so excited? Certificates of course. What genienut doesn’t LOVE certificates? I recently splurged and ordered nine certificates from the General Register Office (GRO) in a bid to verify the children on my 3x great grandparents – well at least those from the first marriage. And after 20 days of waiting (the GRO offer the quickest service), they arrived today.

Can you believe that it is less than 5 months until the FGS and RootsTech Conferences. Actually 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days according to my countdown timer. That’s right folks, it’s not long, and we even have Christmas before that. So the time is guaranteed to fly by!

Monday last week was a crazy (weird crazy) day. It started off with a call from a guy about some heirlooms another person discovered, and I’ve been traced as being the “nearest relative who is interested in them (and who won’t sell them off)” – but all of that is a story in itself, so I’ll save all of that for another day. But as any genienut knows heirlooms are awesome, so as you can imagine I was on a bit of a high, and yes, felt like dancing.

Then I got the mail at work, and I finally got my copy of Inside History Magazine’s September/October 2014 Issue (No. 24). I’m still a paper copy magazine type gal so had to wait impatiently for Australia Post to deliver it. While I’m into some techy-stuff, magazines and books, the old school paper-ones do it for me. Anyway while I’d been waiting for my copy to

It was sometime last year that I discovered an amazing family heirloom and have been wanting to share it all with you for ages, and have decided that now is the time.

There’s no doubt that family historians get excited over old family photos, but can you imagine the excitement of finding a whole photo album of family photos? Well that’s what I found in my dad’s stash of family heirlooms. And trust me I was happy dancing!! Page after page of beautiful old photos – probably from around the 1850s-1860s. But one question. Who are they? I did recognise a few of them – but that’s all. The rest remain unnamed. So that’s partly why I’m writing this, in the hope that others might be able to add some names to these photo.