A streak will likely be broken after today.  We have not missed posting on this blog since January 2, 2017.  However, I have now made the choice to take a little break from writing about our ancestors to spending some quality time with my descendents.  I am not blaming her, but the reason for this decision starts with this little smiling face.

This baby will be added to God’s family through baptism this weekend, and as a result, our whole family is gathering for that special occasion. This gathering is not taking place in East Perry County, but in Minnesota.

As a good Old Lutheran, I will first explain this situation from the perspective of the Law.  If I spend the amount of time that I normally spend researching the stories that I write, the other smiling face in the above photo may inflict great suffering upon me.  I do not care for that possible result.

From a more Gospel-like perspective, I want to spend more time with my family.  They are dear to me, and I really enjoy their company.  I would rather spend time with them than spending much time staring at a computer screen with the usual unsmiling faces that I see in old photos.

I will be returning to God’s country in East Perry County early next week and will resume my passion of attempting to keep the legacies of dead people alive.

In the meantime, I have some suggestions for you.  I hope that you will continue to read on this blog even though there may be no new entries showing up.

• We now have over 500 posts on this blog.  I doubt if there are too many people who have read them all.  You can always go back to find a post that you have not read.
• One way to find old posts is to pick a month from the past and click on that month in the archive list in the right margin of our site.
• There is also a search function in the margin.  It might be a little hard to see.  I wish it was more prominent.  In that search box you can type in a keyword in which you may be interested.  For example you could type in a surname of interest to you.  After you hit return, it will give you a list of posts which include that term.
• You could go back to the blogs from last July and read the one which was written last year for the next few days.
• You could possibly find a post that was written on a special day in your life, such as your birthday or anniversary.
• You could spend some time coming up with potential topics for our blog.  Please let me know if there is some person, place, or event that you might consider a worthy subject for a post on this blog.  You can submit your ideas here in the comment section, on our museum’s Facebook page, or by e-mailing us at research@lutheranmuseum.com.

Perhaps someone at the museum will take it upon themselves to fill in for me while I am away.  Maybe if you see Gerard Fiehler, you can tell him to plop his body behind the computer and write a post.  We all know that he has a million stories to tell.

Meanwhile, I am going to start spending some time with a little cutie patootie while waiting for more of my family to arrive.  I have a few things to teach her about Lutheran traditions……of course, I am referring to the Reformation hat I am wearing.