Dear Family and Friends,

Thank you for coming to check on me today. The life of a website can be a lonely one when you get no visitors and it's no secret that I've been spending quite a bit of time on my own the last few months. I want you to know, from the bottom of my HTML source code, that I don't take this personally. Honestly, I know that I'm getting old and tired. I can't keep up with these younger websites with all their fancy interactiveness and farmville games and such. I came to the realization months ago that I'm nearing the end of my useful life as a family website and I'm at peace with that. I was brought into this World Wide Web to bring the Caldwell Family closer together and to shrink the physical distances that separate you all. I was meant to be a virtual home-base where you could all come to share your life experiences, triumphs, joys and sadness and feel less like a bunch of people who are related and more like a family. I hope that I've been able to do this in some way for each of you.

As I near that scary moment when my hard drive platters stop spinning I have just one thing to ask of you all. Please don't let my efforts be in vain. Please find a way to stay in touch with each other. Please find reasons and opportunities to get together regularly. Continue to share pictures and stories of your lives. I know that most of you have already found places to do so, but for the rest of you, you need to join Facebook. There...now I've gone and said it. Yes, it hurts a little to say so, but I know that's where most of you are already meeting up and the reason that my days are now quiet and most of my visits are from Googlebots. Just do it already! Just don't tell me. I happen to know that Jeff even set up a Caldwellfam Group on Facebook which you can join and then have conversations and make posts only to those who are members of the group. It would make a great place for a new "cliche combo" discussion thread or geneology research updates.

Rest assured that even though I am no longer serving as your family website, all the memories and photos that you've entrusted to me will be saved as long as possible. If anybody wanted a transcript of a specific conversation or everything during a certain time period or whatever, just let Jeff know and he can pull that from my archive, long after I'm gone. Also, those of you who have a caldwellfam.com email address (or who would like one), my going away will not affect that in any way. Those email addresses will continue to work just fine. Jeff's blog, which he does not update often, will also continue to be there.

Finally, I just want to thank you all for sharing these last few years with me. I can't believe it's been 5 years and that you have all posted over 4,500 messages. It seems like just a few cpu cycles to me. I really hope you all continue to stay in touch and don't forget about me. Best of luck to you all.

Sincerely,
Caldwellfam Website