Over the past few years I have managed to research and create a rather large and detailed family tree. Today I managed to come across a treasure trove of information and my family tree now contains 364 individuals dating back as far as 1576. In the family tree there are 40 different surnames ranging from Bray to Vigars and 14 generations.

Quite a few people have asked me where I get all my information from. Well there is no one archive for all this stuff. I started out by asking family about what they knew and if they had any documents, luckily my Mum had an old family tree that helped me get started. There was also an old family bible that had all the births and deaths of family members written in it which was a great help. However I found that these sources usually hit a brickwall around the early 1800’s, so from there I had to look up old church baptism records etc over in England which helped me piece together my family tree. Finally the internet has a number of fantastic tools that can be extremely useful if you have detailed records of a generation or two as there are sites that use that information to match it to census records etc.

Now there was one problem I encountered and that was divorce and pre-marital “relations” which were frowned upon in previous generations. In these instances many families went to great lengths trying to cover up these things which resulted in records being falsified or destroyed. Luckily I only had a handful of cases of this but one result has been a portion where my family tree splits in two since I have no idea who was the ‘real father’.

The reason for this post was to talk about the software I used. To actually create my family tree I use a piece of software called GenoPro. This software is fantastic and is extremely easy to use and unlike other software available gives you great flexibility. It cost me $49 USD which isn’t particularly cheap but I purchased this software years ago and continue to receive upgrades to the latest version for free. They also give you a free trial so you can see if it suits your needs before you hand over your hard earned cash.

I have also used the website Ancestry.com.au which helped me find matches to information in my family tree. This site helped me find a family tree done by a distant relative which had some very useful information.

So pretty much I have been spending the day looking at records of people that died over 400 years ago, but admittedly I always get excited when I find the “next generation”.

Today was surprisingly busy with the whole moving and all. I also had to head down to work to sort out shifts etc, but at least it’s all sorted. After running back and forwards and driving all over the place I went out for the monthly dinner with, well the people that turn up every month (I have no control over these things). So anyway that was relatively exciting. Apart from that not much has been happening, except of course the fact that the Year 12 magazine is finally printed and ready to be posted (about time!!!).

Today we had a garage sale which was very successful. We managed to sell over 20 years worth of useless knick knacks and artifacts netting us a healthy profit. After our wonderful garage sale we decided that the pub was beckoning and we had what is now our traditional Sunday pub night. Thats all for now

Over the last few days, I have been doing a ’spring clean’ (I’m well aware of the fact that it is summer). Basically we have been throwing anything that isn’t completely necessary which is pretty much everything. We have managed to fill a skip and then some full of junk collected over the last 15 years. Some items have included 3 computers, 2 fax machines, 2 printers, roughly 500 books, a couple thousand sheets of paper, old clothing, 100+ CD’s, walkmans, remote control cars, 3 gameboys + games and many other knick knacks. I’m amazed at the amount of junk that I/we have collected over the years.

In other news Pat got his probationary license after failing the first time (in the VicRoads carpark), so congratulations to Pat.

Well 2007 has finally ended and what a year it has been. It amazes me just how fast 2007 went, it seems like it was only yesterday that I was recapping 2006. So here’s what happened in my life in 2007.

• Turned 18 (probably the biggest thing to happen)
• Subsequently went to Crown and a great time was had by all (you all know the story)
• Got my license (again a very big thing)
• Began, and successfully completed Year 12
• Graduated from Haileybury.
• Went to the Year 12 Formal
• My Great Grandmother passed away
• Had a fantastic year as a School Prefect and Vice Captain of Editorial
• Bought an iPod (who’d of thought!)
• Also bought a GPS (yeah I know it was only a couple of days ago but it was a highlight of 2007)
• Went to the Boxing Day Test
• Drastically improved this blog by getting a domain name, a host and moving it to the Wordpress platform
• Went to Sydney to visit my brother and see the city (twice)
• Went down to Phillip Island for ’schoolies’
• Saw the school play ‘Inheritance’
• Saw the school musical ‘Fame’
• Saw the Castlefield musical “A High School Musical” (Luke also went to see it as he “received” tickets for his birthday)
• Applied for University, and received my VCE results.

So that’s 2007 in review, I wish everyone a happy new year and I look forward to recapping what I hope will be a wonderful 2008.

Well I have arrived in Sydney (yesterday actually) after an extremely bumpy flight which resulted in us circling Canberra. The weather up here unfortunately isn’t great but it has improved this afternoon. I spent most of the day looking for a new wallet after my last one got a hole in the coin area which resulted in me spilling coins everytime I removed my wallet from my pocket. There’s not much more to report except I will be going to the Sydney Aquarium tomorrow (apparently it’s much better than Melbourne’s). Then I will be off to enjoy the sights and sounds of Darling Harbour.

Well it’s that time of year again and I must say I have always enjoyed Christmas (especially all the food). Today we put the Christmas tree up which was good, and amazingly all the Christmas lights worked straight out of the box for the first time every (usually your going along trying to find out which globe is blown). So that was basically my adventure filled day, and now its only two more days until I’m enjoying Sydney.

Yesterday was the last day of school. We started with the breakfast in Altera Terra, then moved onto our final House Assembly. At the house assembly we were all given a small bag which contained a Year 12 photo of Castlefield, a big Year 12 photo with everyones photo as well as a caricature drawn by Darwin Truong and finally a copy of the House DVD. After the House Assembly we moved onto our final school assembly which was awesome. Amazingly not many water bombs were thrown and it was a fantastic way to see out our last assembly. Then we moved onto chapel where the Rev told his favourite joke, and we all sang Jerusalem for the last time as students. Then to cap off the day we all had lunch with the staff in the Year 12 common room, which was pretty good except there was no where near enough food or drinks. We listened to speeches by Luke Skelton, Matthew Robinson and Adam Ricciuti as well as an impromptu speech by Stephen Cavnoudias.

About 4 hours later we all headed back to school for our graduation. The graduation was rather boring (as was last years) but it marked the official end of my time at Haileybury as a student. Then came the best part of the night, the Valedictory dinner. With free alcohol and awesome music provided by the staff band (thank you Mrs. Kendall) it proved to be an unforgettable night. I got a lot of photos which I have put up on my gallery for those that are interested. All in all yesterday was a day that wont ever be forgotten and it marked the beginning of a new journey. I hope that I will stay in touch with most of the people in my year level, it has been an absolute honour to know you and I wish you all the very best for the future.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released yesterday to great fanfare. I had the morning off so I decided that I would join the hundreds of people at Borders Chadstone. Now your probably wondering why I, the same person that can’t tolerate standing in line at the canteen for longer than a couple of minutes actually managed to wait in line for a couple of hours on a Saturday morning. The reason was, I had agreed to pick up a number of people’s pre-ordered copies thinking that it would take me 15 minutes max, I also had my pre-ordered copy (and owl) waiting. Also if I had been at home dad would of had me busy preparing for my brothers 13th Birthday (more about that later on). The experience of being at Borders yesterday morning was pretty cool, and it is probably the only time I will see hundreds of people queuing up for a book (some sad people actually felt the need to dress up, I mean if it’s a little 8 year old then yeah it’s cute, but seriously if your 45 and went to the launch yesterday dressed as a wizard then you really need to re-evaluate your life). I felt sorry for the staff at Borders who a) had to dress up b) had to deal with hundreds of screaming kids & c) deal with their normal workload on top of that. I was very proud of myself for cutting about an hour from the wait time by going down to the magazine and CD level where the queue was drastically shorter, you see people don’t realise you can pay for books down there, they think that you can only buy CD’s. After that I headed to school and got the team photo for First Football which turned out pretty average. Then I headed home to help set up my brothers 13th. He ended up having about thirty kids over which was good for me because I was on alcohol patrol, you see my parents had decided that they weren’t allowing alcohol at this party so I went around and confiscated it off all the kids who ’smuggled’ it in, the best part is I got to keep it all because none of the kids wanted their parents to find out, so I now have (well at least did have until I decided to drink it) about $150 worth of booze including a full bottle of Wild Turkey (still sealed) and a bottle of Vodka (I still can’t believe these kids brought so much). Dad also managed to score some fireworks off one of his many ‘contacts’ which was awesome (we of course warned all the neighbours so they could lock their dogs up) I am still amazed the cops didn’t turn up. Finally today we dropped my brother off at the airport (he had flown down for the weekend) after having lunch in Lygon Street.

It has been a busy week hence the lack of posts since I returned from Sydney. I can’t be bothered recapping my whole week but it involved drinking, dancing and countless dinners and lunches. Yesterday I went down to Sandringham to visit my auntie, we went out for breakfast and then lunch as well and if my auntie had of had it her way we would have gone out for dinner as well all in all it wasn’t really that exciting. Tomorrow I will be having breakfast with Nic who has flown down from Singapore for a few weeks. Anyway I hope everyone is enjoying there well earned break and its only a week until everything starts again (yay!).