Anderson Ancestors

Was surfing the net a couple of nights ago, Googling Gladsia Bland and Gladsia Anderson (photo at left), and I came across myarnolds.com, which turned out to be a geneology site for my father's side of the family! This is very exciting for me, as I had wondered about this for some time. It's a complex and complicated site, but I was able to find out that my great great grandmother Malinda was married on the day I found the site, 23 October, 144 years ago, and she had twelve children with three husbands! I'll share more tidbits as I come across them, and will be adding all sorts of people to the myarnolds.com site that are not there.

Monday was also lunch with Geeta, her friend Jean from Australia, and Oyuna, one of Yale's World Fellows. Rachel came too. It was quite lively listening to Oyuna talk about her home country of Mongolia and her work with the political, religious, and social systems there, and her two children, whom she admits are her best fashion advisors. Jean, it turns out, shares a financial accountant with the Steve Irwin family, and one of her children goes to the same school as Bindi Irwin. Six degrees of separation indeed.

On Sunday Annette and I got together to do crafts, she a glittery holiday wreath, and I one of my oatmeal box collages. It was great fun, and Bindi was well diverted by some of the goodies we won at the dog costume contest. We didn't finish so will get together some time this week to complete our projects.

And today my sister Judy emailed me to say she had met someone through her husband Dale's work in the physics department at the Univ. of Illinois, and it turned out to be my childhood friend Celia! So in three days I have made connections with fifth and second cousins, and an old friend from elementary school. I look forward to finding out more about these folks.