WIFFAC--Southern California and Ownership of my own family history

If you've been reading this blog for very long, you know my Mother's family comes from Southern California and I love going back there every June for the Southern California Genealogical Conference.  I've written many times about being able to explore my own family history and being able to take my children back to see where my Mom grew up.
Teenager Update--Family History Trip
Come See Us In Sunny CA
Nama--My Independent Spirit
And most recently about this trip on the Zap The Grandma Gap Blog at Taking My Daughter On A Family History Trip

This time I took my daughter and her friend and we had a wonderful time.  We went down to the Santa Monica Pier three times--an important place in my family's history.  We rode the carousel, and the Ferris wheel and walked around the pier.  We checked out the house where my Mom grew up, her schools, her neighborhood, the church she attended and where my Mom and Dad's reception was, the temple they were married in, the beaches where we hung out when I was a little girl, the Westfield Culver City Mall, and lots of other places important to our history.

But the best part was something I've been talking alot about with my kids and family history.  I wrote a recent blog post about it over at my ZapTheGrandmaGap Blog.  I gained real OWNERSHIP this year.   My phone battery wasn't cooperating, and the charger in the car was cooperating even less, so I had to really figure out the lay of the land without my GPS.  Like I wrote about last year, we had stopped by the neighborhood many times, but my parents were always driving, or we were following them in the next car.  By the time we went back and forth between Burbank and Westchester and Santa Monica several times this year, I was starting to feel like I really knew the lay of the land for myself.  I can't really describe how important that was for me.  I felt ownership of my family history and I felt connected to Southern California like I never had before.  I felt more a part of that history and those people.  I felt empowered to be able to connect them to the future generations.

So there were lots of awesome things going on at SCGS this year, great talks with the other vendors (as usual) my lectures went well, and a great venue and great people.  As always, the Southern California Genealogy Conference was fantastic this summer.  Paula and Leo and Viki and their team do such a fantastic job every year.  Jamboree is a great asset to the genealogy community.   But this year I was really focused making my own family history--having my daughter and her friend there, and getting an opportunity to really invest her and myself in my matriarchal family.  And that is priceless.