Arielle Nobile

If you are blessed to have your Father still around, take this opportunity to do something special for him to show him how much you love him and how much you appreciate all he has done for you.

If you try to do it all yourself, chances are you'll leave out some important details and not have a very good time in the process. Follow these five tips and you will have the best family reunion ever.

The power of asking a family to sit for a few hours individually and reminisce, recollect, and reveal is indescribable until you experience it for yourself. I have witnessed old men weeping over their mothers, siblings finally voicing the admiration and awe they have for each other, women owning the importance of their life's work as a mother. I once again feel incredibly blessed that I have been called to this work—that I get to help families reconnect.

I am blessed to have known three of my four great grandmothers. Two were from the old country, Russia and Eastern Europe, and two born and bred in Chicago. Even though I had known these women, been in their presence, spent holidays and birthdays with them, I didn't really know them at all. I had never sat down to ask them what their lives had been like growing up at the turn of the century or how they met their husbands and feel in love. How many of us ask these questions too late?

Many of us have relatives who are military veterans, and it may be difficult for them to talk about their service, especially if they served in combat. Offering to interview them about their service can let them know that you are interested in their service experience and create an opening for them speak about it.

As the digital age takes over, you are probably worried and wondering what to do about all the slides and negatives you may still have lying around in boxes. The truth is if you don't take the steps to get them digitized now, they will probably never be looked at again, as few in the younger generations have the patience to sift through boxes and deal with slide carousels.

Most people have the best intentions for their family photos, but most photos still end up in bad situations for most of their lives.The good news is that you can change this and preserve your family photographs with a little organized effort. Museum-quality archival products are now available for the same amount of money you could spend on non-archival storage boxes and albums, and many companies makes boxes, binders, folders, and albums for every kind of photo, newspaper clipping, diploma.

Often our clients realize after conducting a series of interviews that there are some gaps in factual information where their family is concerned. Maybe there is some confusion in the family as to where they came from or what the name once was or speculation about famous ancestry. While it is possible to do genealogy research on your own online, a professional genealogist can save you lots of time, headaches, and deadends.

Being interviewed can be a nerve-racking experience for many people and the more that the interviewee can focus on ahead of time the better. However, we also believe that the best interviews are spontaneous and unprepared, like life itself. Here is a list of some ways that they can prepare for the interview to give them something to focus on other than their terror or self-consciousness.

While the content is most important for the interview, since it is video the sound and picture matter too. Here are a few final tips for creating a technically great interview on a low budget with non-invasive feeling equipment.