Family History

My ancestry has everything in the world to do with my personal and creative interests and I've been researching my family's origins in the U.K. and Europe. I know I have ancestors from the area of Aberdeen and Fife, Scotland, my Leslie family on my maternal grandmother's side. My Brooks family is Anglo-Norman, originally from Broc in the Loire region of France, and an ancestor named Ralph Broc went to Essex County outside of London after William the Conqueror took England. The Broc family had supported him in his bid and were given some lands as a reward. Over time the name Anglicised to Brooks. I know I have Irish, German and Dutch ancestry but I don't know anything about exactly what town or region those people came from. My Swedish ancestors were named Sickles, and came from somewhere in southern Sweden, but that is all I know about that branch of the family. I want to visit the places I know I have family connections to. I found some really lovely pictures online of Broc, Essex and Aberdeenshire and put them up in my workspace, along with a copy of the bookcover design my friend Osvaldo Valle is working on for The Flower of Knighthood. I can already tell they are inspiring me. I can't travel anywhere abroad this year because I have a lot of family stuff to wrap up, but I hope to go back to France or the U.K. in 2012.