Here we are about a quarter of the way through 2015 already. The first session of Thomas MacEntee’s Genealogy Do-Over concluded and started the second cycle on April 4, but I chose to do a Genealogy Go-Over. I shared my initial plan to have all my photos and documents professionally digitally scanned this year back on March 8.

I am pausing to review my own progress at this point. My initial goal to scan all I have was developed in 2013 and worked on through 2014. “Worked on” in this instance means husband Dave scanned items given to him in little piles. I then backed up the images and attached them to my family tree. The problem with that method is that Dave isn’t thrilled about being the family scanner, given that there are thousands of items in the collection. He also isn’t terribly fast. That led to my February 2015 goal to have all items professionally scanned and I chose a vendor that was at RootsTech to do the work.

April 22: Where am I in terms of project progress?

1. All items were removed from archival albums, duplicate photos discarded after sharing with extended family, sorted and shipped. The first box contained 1439 items. That was just my side of the family. Boxes 2, 3 and 4 contained the Stufflebean ancestor items and current photos and mementos of this generation. There were 4000+ items in those boxes. Boxes 2, 3 and 4 just recently returned and are waiting to be unpacked.

2. Dave and I are currently on the first of two cruises while our son housesits for us. We won’t be settled back at home for more than five days in between the two trips so my plan is to begin remounting all items back into the archival albums during our very hot desert summer months. This process will begin in mid-June.

3. I also need to process the scanned images, backing them up and attaching them to my family tree. I see this process happening with an intermixed schedule with the mounting of originals in albums. When I tire of attaching photo corners to pictures, I will take a break and work on the computer.

Assessment of my self-chosen one year timeline to complete this project:

I believe that while re-mounting the originals and processing the digital images will take many hours, given the fact that I have six months plus two weeks to complete the task, I think it is reasonable to believe that I will finish the project by the end of the year. In fact, I think most of it, if not all, will be done by September. I am retired and, like many of my similarly retired friends living here year-round, I find things to do in the air-conditioned house.

I will post one more progress update when I finish the project or when 2015 ends, whichever comes first!