Family History Bug

I got bit by the Family History Bug a few months ago. It all started when we had an Enrichment activity where we made actual family trees with family member's names on leaves. Ever since then, I've wanted to find out names and stories of those family members who are no longer with us. I went home in July and my mom and I sorted through old boxes in the attic and found treasures. Letters, pictures, and a couple of family history books written by my great aunt. Her books have numerous stories and dates and pictures in it, but it's not really easy to figure who is related to who and how. I'm the type of person who needs to see a pedigree chart to be able to visualize everyone's place in history. I sat down today and picked apart this book and figured out who were my direct line and who were uncles and aunts and I drew it all out on a piece of paper so I can see it. It's great to see it all charted out now! I'm thankful to this great aunt for already taking the time to start the research. She has 6 generations back on my grandpa's side so I'm excited to start the adventure of finding out who these people really were besides just a name and a birthday. I expanded the realm of my comfort level and I wrote to my great aunt (who's probably never heard of me/met me) and asked her if she had any more information on our family and if I could meet with her next time I'm in Florida. I hope she's up to it. I'm also really really excited about the new family history website I can't wait for it to open in our temple district so that I can start using it. It has so many cool features! It's incorporating five or six other family search sites and combining all that information onto one site. I'm hoping that when I start building my family tree, there will be other branches that "magically" appear!