Okay, the last week (or has it been two?) has been crazy with energy and emotion. First of all, Jake, after agreeing to help us set up an extended family website went ahead and did it! We totally thought it would be something for the future, like in a month maybe try to start when he had the time, etc., and it's already up and functional! Joy and I have been busy looking and learning, giving our opinion freely to someone who will listen (Jake) and we are watching the www.christensenfamilyhistory.com and the www.whitneyfamilyhistory.com sites slowly transform into something awesome and informational. Today I learned how to link the pictures with the text, and I am slowly working my way through M.J.'s history to hook it all together. I am exercising much self control and I only work on it a certain amount of time per day, otherwise I'd be up all night besides all day. It helps that my computer is acting up a lot--I have to be in a patient frame of mind to get it moving. Once I'm on the site, it's just fine.
Now I want to address the title "Web Presence." It's really a way of saying, hey, we are out on the web, come check us out. But for me it was something more. First Jake set up the Christensen site, then after a few days and about fifteen emails later and a phone conference, he set up the Ralph E. and Doris E. Whitney site. When he e-mailed me to tell me it was ready, I went right for it, and there was a picture of my grandma and grandpa, grinning and hanging out in the front room of their house in Overton. (see above.) I thought I was going to cry. Maybe I did a little. But talk about web presence! I felt their spirits so strong and powerful, and the message was, "Thank You!" Tons of gratitude poured out, for what little research and publishing we have done in their behalf, and also for what lies in the future. Did I mention I am excited??!!!
Something else. This week in choir on Thursday we were rehearsing for Sunday, and one of the pieces was "Homeward Bound." I immediately thought of my dad, Bert Whitney, as that song tends to do--it sends me to the time when he was dying, and we used that music for comfort and expression, ultimately publishing the words to it on the back of his funeral program. I did a little calculation in my head and realized that Sunday, today, is the 3rd year anniversary of his death. We sang the song this morning, and i managed to get through it okay. So, that was for you Dad.
1 comment:
Amen and Amen. Why should I get my own blog when you already express my emotions so well? I knew that "Homeward Bound" was for Dad too, and I think he also is pleased at our forward progress in the family history department. We've felt those Whitneys waiting in the wings the whole time we've been working on the Christensen book(s), and of course the Nays are not that polite. They often step out on stage and pull faces at us, childlike, and tug at our skirts asking "When it is our turn?"
"Again?" we ask, but we smile fondly and revel every day in the miracles that happen--Jake's help being one of the most recent.
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