This is my Dad and Mom, Dexter and Louise Halldin in 1941, 12 years before I was born.

Why searching for my family?  Because I am, have been, always will be.  It’s not that I don’t have a family – I do – a mixed bag of nuts for sure and I love them!  I am searching for ancestral family, those who came before us and all that.  I also am looking for family that I never knew existed – I have found cousins – have met some – and learned more about our family as a result.  I guess this current urge to put the search for family in a blog is due to my DNA test I recently took.  I have always known that my father’s family was from Sweden, his parents emigrated in the late 1800’s and so when I did my DNA test I was certain I would turn up 50% Swedish and the other 50% a mixed bag of English and French from what my mom told me her heritage was.  I couldn’t have been more surprised when my ethnicity came up very different!
52% Great Britain – ok, that made sense from Mom’s side, 17% Irish (What??  no Irish that I have found, but could happen I guess) 16% Western European (Makes more sense with French included there), 10% Italy/Greece and 1% Scandinavian.  Whoa!  what the heck???  First thought in my mind is that my Dad Dexter was not my biological father…what else could I think???  My mom was a strange lady and she sure liked the men, so anything is possible.  So I have been trying to figure out what is causing this ethnicity quandary!  I mean, maybe my Swedish grandparents parents came from Ireland or Western Europe? or ???  I will not profess to be even remotely able to understand DNA and it’s variables – which are many – but still.!  so one of my male cousins on my dad’s side – he would be my first cousin once removed – his dad was my dad’s nephew, said he would test his DNA, then his sister did it and her daughter did it.  I am not coming up as a match to my male cousin or my female cousins daughter – female cousin’s results are in yet.  This is all on Ancestry.com where they match you up to other test takers and give  you lots of cousins for sure.  I DO show up as cousin to people in Alabama, or family ties to Alabama and I have NO CLUE how that happened…we have no family in Alabama but I am still studying that one – maybe someone on my mom’s side ended up there – but I am not finding it  yet!  Anyhow – all of that has started me going through old pictures, researching my family tree as far back as I can go.  I have made some interesting discoveries that I will be sharing.  I am hoping that my family will read this and learn and that any other readers will just be interested in the weirdness of it all!!!

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