The Family Calendar can be used for both finding peoples birthdays or anniversaries and to look for any planned events that may be coming up such as reunions, parties, graduations, weddings etc.

If you have an upcoming event you want to post or have a correction to report, click the e-mail button below to send the info to the webmaster.

The Family Calendar is located on a separate web site. When you open it you should bookmark it so you can open it quickly from now on.

The calendar currently shows the birthdays of all the family members still living. Birthdays have a gold colored background.

Also included are couples' anniversary dates (these appear in turquoise with a border)

To tell the difference look for a Family Code after a single name - that's a birthday.

If the listing is a pair (Steve & Edie) with no code - it's their anniversary.

Special Family Events will appear in pink and have a border around the box so you can find them more easily.

If you want to send a person an e-mail or a birthday card etc. Just click on their name and it will open their family web page. From there you can click their e-mail button or go to the Directory page and look up their mailing address.

You will notice a number of buttons at the bottom of the calendar page that will allow you to change the way the calendar looks and works. Experiment with these until you find the easiest way for you to use it.

Getting to the "EDIT" page

In order to protect the calendar from unauthorized people deleting any or all entries I have disabled the ability to edit existing items except by the administrator (me).

However, you can easily add to the calendar yourself with just a few clicks of the mouse. Here's how:

First, find the Year/Month/Day you want to change. In the colored bar above the day box you will see the date. In the example below it is the 13th:

Click the date number. The "Edit" page will open. A portion of this page is shown below:

Note: From time to time I may change the calendar colors - just for fun.

To create a New Event, first go to the calendar page where the event will happen and click the number of its day. An "Add New Event" window like the one below will open:

Since you clicked on the exact date you wanted, the Date is already set at the top left, but you can change it if desired using the popup menus.

All you need to do is type the text for the new event into the box provided, then select "Special Event" from the "Category" popup menu. If the event has a start and end time you can set these in the upper right. Here we have a reunion that starts at 11:30 in the morning and runs until 3 AM the following morning.

Notifying the Webmaster:
At the bottom of the edit window you will find a section titled "Email Notification (Optional)".
In the TO: box you should type the address shown here (the family site webmster). That will alert me to the change so I can include it in the next newsletter,
In addition you can send similar notices to additional members in the "CC" box, (separated by commas) to let anyone else know about the change.

Finally, click the "Create Event" button at the bottom and you're done!

Note: The section below this titled "Repeat Information" should not be changed. By default it is set to Not repeat the event the next year(s).

To get back the Calendar page click the link called "View Calendar" in the upper left corner (not shown here).

Above you can see the results - a two day event highlighted in red with a border!

To add your anniversary date to the calendar you follow the same instructions above to create any new event except you must select "Anniversary" from the "Category" popup menu. Type in your first names and last name if desired. The word "Anniversary" will automatically appear above the entry on the calendar.

In addition you must set the entry to repeat every year. You do that using the "Repeat Information" section below. Here's how:

There are four steps to complete here.

First, click the "Repeat Every" button shown above (4th one down).

Second, type "12" into the "month(s)" box.

Third, select the correct day of the month from the scrolling box at the right. Make sure it matches the date of your anniversary.

Fourth, Click the "Forever" button at the bottom - "Repeat Until" section. This assumes your marriage will last that long, of course. If you're psychic or know something, you can use the Date Selector option. (Heh)

Don't forget to e-mail the webmaster about the addition using the "E-mail Notification" section at the bottom.

When you're done, click the "Create Event" button at the bottom and return to the Calendar to check your results.

There is a really cool option available for the calendar - "Subscription." What this allows you to do is to create a calendar on your own PC using a variety of common calendar programs, then automatically link it to the web calendar so that every time the web version is changed, your copy is automatically updated!

The advantage of this is two-fold. First you don't have to get on line just to check the calendar (although you will have to be connected to update your PC calendar).
But the big advantage is that you can use the features of your calendar program to set alarms for various events, print calendar pages, event lists etc., - whatever your program is able to do. Here's how to do it:

From the calendar page, find the link labeled "Options" below the calendar and click it:

This will open the Options window:

Click the "iCalendar Subscription" link. The window below will open:

At this point you're almost done. If you don't want the add-ins included in your calendar (These are Holidays and Moon phases right now) uncheck the box. Since our calendar doesn't require a Username or Password you must leave those spaces blank.
Finally, click on the "Subscribe" button and you’ll get this window:

OK, here's the tricky part - choosing the right type of subscription. Lucky (for me) I use the Apple iCal program so my choice was obvious - webcal. Depending on your program this link may or may not work. It won't hurt anything to try it so give it a shot. If not, try the "HTTP" link and follow the instructions there.

You're done!

Now what?

Well, that depends on you operating system. In most cases the computer should guide you through the process. Here's what happened on my Macintosh system (Your results might vary):

Right after clicking the Subscribe button my Mac opened it's calendar program - "iCal" and I got a prompt asking if I wanted to save the new Subscription so I clicked "Save" and it prompted me to name the new calendar, which I did. Then it asked me how often I wanted to update the calendar and I selected "Every Day" and clicked "Done."

In a few seconds I had a brand new calendar! Now every day when I boot up my Mac, my calendar is updated and I'm ready to go.

Hopefully, your experience will be equally simple and painless but it may take some trial & error to get it to work. But once it's done, your set for life!