My little secret

Now that Christmas is over, I can let you all in a little secret that very few people have known about. I'm very proud of myself for keeping this secret for so long (since about September). There were some days I thought I would burst if I didn't tell people, and I had to stop myself a time or two from posting on this blog. Before you get all excited, let me remind you of what I said in my last post: This is NOT an announcement! We do not, nor will we in the near future, have kids. Stop reading babies into everything! (Okay so I can see how what I just wrote could lead you to believe that babies are involved and for that I am sorry. No babies here.) I have been dying to tell everyone about the present I got Husband! I don't want to brag or sound all "Look at me! Look at me!", but I gave Husband THE perfect gift this Christmas. Have you ever given someone THE perfect gift? If you have then you know the excitement I've been feeling over the last few months. And I want to share that excitement with you!

In September, I got this brilliant idea that I would try to find Husband's ancestors. I knew that a few years ago he had made an attempt to figure out where he came from, but he didn't get very far and gave up. I knew that it would be a lot of work and that I might not get very far either, but I wanted to try it anyway. So, I emailed one of his aunts and got basic information (names of grandparents, birth dates etc). The project took off from there, thanks to the Family Search website and Google. I have no idea how much time I spent on this gift, but I can tell you it was hours and hours! It was pretty difficult to find time to do it because Husband was always home! A few times, I thought he was on to me despite my best efforts to keep it a secret. One day, I wanted to go to my church's family history centre so I told him I had some errands to run. Husband never wants to come with me when I run errands but for some reason he offered to go that day. I had to make up some story about taking a long time and doing a bunch of stuff so he would take back his offer. Another time, I accidentally left one of the charts on our photocopier and he found it. I told him it was something for church and quickly ran away! Despite the close calls and his always being home, I was able to find a lot of information and thankfully he had no idea. On some of his lines, I made it to the 1400s before I hit dead ends and I got one line back to the 1300s! I was also able to find some wikipedia articles and cool stories about some of his ancestors so I put those in the book as well.

As with all great ideas, I didn't do this alone and I want to thank a few people in particular. Thanks to Husband's aunt for providing me with enough names and dates to start the search. Thanks to Husband's sister who was sneaky-sneaky about getting information from their mom. Thanks to my mom for answering my never-ending questions about how to verify names and dates, how to organise the information and how not to lose my mind when I came to a dead end! Thanks to Husband's friend who kept him out for 4 hours just days before Christmas so I could try to get as much information onto charts as possible. And lastly, thanks to my dear friend Alicia for assuring me that it is was definitely okay to lie to Husband about what I was up to, because it was for a Christmas gift! *Disclaimer, Neither Alicia nor I condone lying to your spouse, however there are some exceptions and this definitely counts!*

Husband sat for over 30 minutes just reading over the information I had collected. I really should have given this gift to him last, because I still had a gift to open and I had remind him about it. My gift definitely derailed our gift opening! Husband says we shouldn't exchange gifts anymore because nothing I give him will top this present. I say "Challenge accepted!"