Saturday, August 9, 2008

Welcome to My Blog!

Welcome to my blog! My name is Tammy and I am the mother of a 16-year old daughter and 7-year old twin boys. And no, twins are not double trouble. However their sister is a different story!

I am the co-owner of iPlanIt, LLC. We are a meeting planning and online registration company. Our clients are non-profit associations, membership organizations and some of the largest corporations in the United States. We currently have 3 full time staff, 1 almost full time independent contractor and numerous part time/temporary contractors. We are based out of Longmont and Arvada, Colorado, near Denver.

When I have time, my hobby is genealogy. I love playing detective trying to figure out who my ancestors are. I have so many branches off my main tree because I include everyone I am related to directly or indirectly. I have been doing genealogy since 2001, but had to take a 3-year hiatius from it when I started my own company (iPlanIt). For those 3 years, I was working 18-20 hour days, 7 days a week nearly every single week. I recently brought in a partner and we hired our first full time employee in May. Since then I've actually been able to get back to working on my genealogy. I use Family Tree Maker 2008 (which I don't like as well as the 2005 version) and have over 6,500 individuals and over 19 generations in my file. This seems like a lot of people until I see other trees with over 20,000 people. I have a lot of information I still need to add to my tree, but I've just not had the time. I still consider myself an amateur genealogist. Most of my research has been on the internet along with a couple of trips to the genealogy library in Salt Lake City and a number of cemetery transcription projects. I have not had the opportunity to do much onsite research or visiting court houses, local libraries, etc. I can't wait until iPlanIt starts operating on its own and makes me enough money to be in semi-retirement so I can do more genealogy.

I'm also working on writing a mystery novel about an amateur genealogist. I am still developing the characters and the situations. I wake up at night with ideas for the book so I've started keeping my laptop in my room at night so I can write them down. I had to start using my computer because I can't read my writing if I write by hand :-). So far it is very preliminary, but it has been fun. Who knows, this blog may become a way of trying out ideas or posting status updates.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend!!