Ancestry Day and Veteran's Day

The San Francisco Hyatt Regency Lobby.

Saturday morning I was up before the crack of dawn to drive up to San Francisco for the weekend. It's always great to spend time with my daughters there, dining and shopping, watching movies and chatting. This weekend I had an additional reason to go north.  One of my hobbies is genealogy and ancestry.com was putting on a conference on Saturday. It was held at the Hyatt Regency and the ballroom was packed with people. I ate lunch in the hotel restaurant, then walked around to enjoy the beautiful views the floor to ceiling windows offered.

The clock tower of the Ferry Building.

The Bay Bridge (San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge)

The Embarcadero Center Ice Skating Rink.

The Ancestry Day presenters were fabulous and I left with a syllabus full of helpful hints and notes. Hobby experts now rank genealogy as the second most popular hobby in the country, following on the heels of gardening as number one.
  
Saturday night the girls picked me up at the hotel and we went out to dinner. I spent the night at their apartment and then Sunday we shopped. We don't have to have elaborate plans to have a great time together. 

Have had a few busy days here. Friday was a non-student day at work so the speech and language therapists in our district met to share therapy materials and ideas, then had lunch together. Yesterday, Veteran's Day, was a day off work which gave me time to try out some of the genealogy research techniques I learned and work on my novel. It's coming along nicely and I'm keeping up with the NANOWRIMO word count. 

This week and all year round, please thank a Vet for their service to our country! Researching our roots makes me appreciate all the veterans in our family tree, from the Revolutionary War to current days.

Before we know it, Thanksgiving will be here! Nights are cooler -- November is in the air!