Gotta love the internet...

I was eating lunch an hour ago at my favorite restaurant with my toddler (who loves baked potato soup there.) A woman came up to me and started talking and then I ealized she was a classmate of mine! Even though I hadn't seen her in many years, I knew her via her profile pic on Facebook. In talking, I realized that we had kids near the same age (the first two were only a year apart.) I told her that I didn't know she had kids around my kids' ages...and that back then, I had no other friends with kids and had been so lonely. For clarity, my oldest is 25 and I got pregnant right out of high school two months after I got married....sigh. All my friends then were in college or working and certainly not having kids, much less married. I felt alone and didn't have anybody to share experiences or stories with. She only keeps in touch with one person from high school (and I was similar that I only had one bff from school too.) We laughed as we now keep in touch with others via the internet. I wish I had known then...

When I had my kindergartener, I joined an online mom's group (which eventually became private) and have become close to many of them (even meeting some in real life.) Last summer, I drove two states away to meet a couple moms who were going to the zoo for the day. I made it a mini-vacation and stopped along the way to do some ancestry footwork for some of my hubby's ancestors.

Beforehand, I updated my 'tree' on ancestry.com so that I could figure out exactly which ones came from the area I was going to visit. I was able to locate the cemetary where a few were buried (similar to my own experience finding my own great grandfather in Feb 2009.) I called and the place sent me the map and whereabouts of the burial places. I found the gravestones of my hubby's great grandfather and great great grandmother who died in 1891. While looking at my printouts, I noticed a wrong date in my information online on my tree and totally forgot about it. That is, until this week.

I got a message about the date from someone else working on their tree (which coincided with mine.) They are from Norway. We've exchanged a little information and I emailed some of the pics I took from the cemetary trip last summer. I think it's so cool that other countries don't seem so far away and that I'm not as lonely as I used to be....with the internet.

Here's a picture of the site where three of my hubby's ancestors are buried. It was a good trip.