Thursday, April 11, 2013

Thankful Thursday

 Today I am thankful for my grandfather Leland Sorteberg (1918-1996).  I have wonderful memories of him growing up.  They lived in a cabin on the lake and my brother and I would spend the night there often.  We would get up early and Grandma would make us eat oatmeal and then we would go fishing.  My grandpa was a traveler.  It seems to be in our blood.  My family loves to travel and see new places.  They had an airstream trailer that they pulled everywhere.  They have a map on the wall that had all of the places they had been in their airstream, they made it to all of the US states and many countries.  They were Texas Snow Birds every winter.  I like to think that my love for travel came from him.

 One of the many things that he was able to do was to travel to Norway to continue research on our family history.  I was far too young at that time to be able to appreciate what it was that he was doing.  He was able to travel to the family farm in Aal, Hollingdal, Norway.  At that time he was able to see where his grandparents lived and confirm many of the relatives information.
I am so fortunate to have all of this information.  I am about the only one in the immediate family that has any interest in the family history.  I don't mind but it does make asking the right questions to get further information that much harder!  I have always had an interest in the family history but it hasn't taken root until I became an adult and had my own family.  I so wish that I could sit down with my grandfather today and share all of his memories.  He was very good at writing down the history of others.  He never was able to write his own.  He passed away suddenly from a heart attack never dreaming that his research would come to such an abrupt end.  All of the above information, pages and pages of data were done on his 1980s computer, writing letters, making phone calls and traveling all over to find more and more information about our family.
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6 comments:

  1. Just came across your blog, and love it because it reminds me of when I started researching.

    Please, what are "Texas Snow Birds"? I'm from Texas, but I can only guess at what it means.

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  2. Welcome Christine to the world of genealogy blogging.

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  3. Welcome to Geneabloggers!! This is a great blogging community. I've been a member for about seven months. It has given me an incentive to blog about my gg grandfather.

    Regards, Grant

    http://thestephensherwoodletters.blogspot.com

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  4. Welcome to Geneabloggers! That's wonderful that you have so much information from your grandfather and so many great memories. In Florida, a Snow Bird is someone from up north that lives in Florida in the winters, so I'm guessing it has the same meaning in Texas!

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  5. Thank you all for checking out my blog! I love having people who actually understand what I am doing look at what I have. This has been a fun few days with a great new community. Natalie snow birds are indead northerners that winter in the south. Typically texas and Arizona! I look forward to all of your sites as well.

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  6. Thank you all for checking out my blog! I love having people who actually understand what I am doing look at what I have. This has been a fun few days with a great new community. Natalie snow birds are indead northerners that winter in the south. Typically texas and Arizona! I look forward to all of your sites as well.

    ReplyDelete