• Twitter has been oddly quiet lately. I haven’t even tweeted in a week. #
• A date on a calendar shouldn’t bother me, yet today does. My dad’s been gone for three years. Doesn’t seem possible. #

• It’s 20 minutes til 2011 and I’m watching NKOTB & Backstreet Boys perform. If they weren’t all old now I’d say my TV went back in time. #
• Happy 2011!!! #newyear #
• This is the 33rd New Year’s Eve I’ve spent with my grandfather. Great way to start each year. #
• New Year’s Day is always kind of sad because it means my Christmas vacation is over. Thank god for an extra day this year. #
• Ugh, 53 degrees yesterday, 48 & rainy today… Where did winter go?! It’s like it took the weekend off. #

It doesn’t seem at all possible that more than 6 months have passed since the death of my father. I’ve created memorial pages on my genealogy site for other family members, but I felt like I should make something more substantial for my Dad. What started out as a page on my family tree site has slowly evolved into emilgatti.com.

Please feel free to visit and take a look at the photos, stories, biography, etc. Then if you have anything you’d like to add about my Dad, please submit it by using the links on the site. I know that there are more stories and details to be added, but I rely on the the people who know them to share them.

Go to www.emilgatti.com for info.

Words can’t even begin to tell you how difficult the past three weeks has been for my family and me. It has only been made easier by something equally indescribable. That is the overwhelming support that we’ve received from family, friends, coworkers and even folks who never even knew my father. Cards, flowers, gifts, phone calls, e-mails, dinner invitations, visits are the tangible items that we’ve received, but what we’ve really received is kindness, love and comfort.

We’ve mailed out over 100 thank you notes, but no greeting card can truly convey how thankful we are for the outpouring of support that has been bestowed upon us.

Just when I thought the Gatti family tree was up to date Debbie’s branch of the tree has sprouted yet another new leaf. OK, maybe I’m taking the tree metaphor a bit far! Please welcome Micah John Bowling to the family. He was born August 24th to Wendy and Michael Bowling.For those keeping score, that makes 6 members of Generation H of the Gatti tree, all of whom are grandchildren of Debbie and great-grandchildren of Sonny and Dot.

Welcome to the newest member of the Gatti family. Jayden John Van Houten was born to Elissa Van Houten on June 29th. Thanks to Debbie for keeping me up to date on her quickly growing branch of the tree!

After a very long delay, I finally have put Victor’s tale of his adventure aboard the Ukrainian schooner Bat’kivshchyna on the family tree site. It’s an fascinating story (with photos) told by Victor as only he could tell it.

Sorry this took so long. Victor sent me the pieces this story on 3 December 2005. It’s unbelievable that it took me almost a year to get it online. Sadly, right around the time he sent it to me, the Billy Gatti problem arose and the band of adventurous Ukranians took a backseat to several mean-spirited Italians! Then life just got too busy to get to it, but better late than never!

Check it out here.

I just added the latest addition to the Gatti section of the family tree site. Michael Toon married Amanda Abbott. Congrats!

I just finished posting the photos from the luau. Check them out now at www.michaelgatti.com/luau. Enjoy. If you’re in any of the photos and want an un-watermarked copy, let me know.

After 2 months of planning and shopping and 2 days of cooking, the big Anniversary Luau was a huge success. Everything went smoothly and everyone had a great time.
Besides planning and cooking etc., I was also of course the photographer. I woking on the photos and they’ll be on the web very soon.

Thanks to everyone who made this day so special. You all helped create a day that my parents won’t soon forget.

Keep watching www.michaelgatti.com/luau for up to the minute status, but as of right now the luau is on as planned. The weather forecast is very promising! Apparently luck is on our side!

I just added another new family member to the Gatti branch of my family tree. Bo & Tanna Wright had a baby girl, Annika Pacie Wright. Visit the family tree site for a link to her detail page and photos.

After several months offline, the family tree is back! It’s got a new name, a whole new look and more features than ever. It’s no longer restricted to one small part of the family, it includes all parts of the family now. Some sections are still under construction, but just keep watching because more and more will be added over time.

Some features of interest are that every detail page now has a place for external links where you can see family members’ own personal wesbites, a surname list to give you idea of what names are in my family tree data, a genealogy research resource page and more.

You probably already know that I’m working on a brand new family tree website. It will be a big improvement over my previous site. Besides making better use of the technology at hand in order to make the site easier to manage and scale, I’ve also left a lot of room for additional content that I intend to add. It hasn’t launched yet, but I’m working on it finally!

As I work on it and go through all of the existing information that I already have available, I’ve realized something that is pretty amazing. My little website really does reach a world wide audience. I’ve gotten e-mails from so many people who share last nameswith people in my family. They’ve come from all corners of the United States plus countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany just to name a few. I see hits from all around the world in my site logs, but I often think that it’s probably just robots crawling my site. But the big folder of e-mails that I have from around the world tells me otherwise.

Anyway, just sharing my amazement. I’ll address this in a more formal way on the new site. If you’re a distant relative or someone who shares a surname, feel free to drop me a line or just post a comment right here in the blog.

I’ll warn you right up front that this isn’t a big update, but I just wanted to mention that I have finally began to work on picking up my family tree website up off the ground and dusting it off.

Sometimes in life a person tries to cause you grief and you let them discourage you. Other times a person tries to cause you grief and you turn that negative energy right around and turn it into creative energy.

That being said, a whole new family tree website is in its earliest stages of development. It’s not even in the form of HTML yet, but it’s basic brainstorming fills almost half of a notebook. I’ll keep you posted as progress continues.

I will make one promise though… it will be bigger and better than ever before.