Liv's Tree House

So in December 2015, I was invited by an old friend to participate in a challenge that was issued by Wendy Watson Nelson during her April 2015 BYU Women's Conference address .  If you haven't read the address, you must!! It's long, but super insightful and I LOVE it, I've read it and shared it many times. When I first read the talk and was invited to the challenge I kind of shrugged it off, "why did I need to do this, I already have a testimony of family history work", BUT something nagged me and I decided to do it.  Let's add to this that the girl who invited me, chose to start the challenge the first week of December, so as a busy mom, that was reason enough to say no, but I decided to bite the bullet.  The next 21 days were filled with discovery, excitement, joy, lots of prayer, and some amazing experiences for both me and those who I was praying for.  I learned more about the power in family history and temple work that week than I had in the previous

So I come from a split home, but only sort of, because I was only one when both my parents got remarried so I never really felt the affects of the divorce.  It was more just a two family world for me.  In my world it was 2 families, 2 Christmases, 2 birthday’s, no problem!!  Obviously there were some challenges related to the situation but no more than your average kid.  In a lot of ways I feel like it helped me to be more well rounded, and I knew from an early age that people have different beliefs, standards, and traditions, and I’ve never really struggled to accept that.  That said, I was blessed with a whole lot of love given the circumstances.  My step parents were both always good to me and their families were always completely welcoming and loving.  My step-dad literally took me in as his own, and given that I lived with he and my mom for the most part, it made me feel like I had a normal family.  Now that’s just my background for the purpose of my post which is my Grandpa Winn,

Alright so I had a super busy weekend.  I taught 3 classes this last Sunday at the BYU Family History Library , and what I hadn’t thought to prepare mentally for was the fact that if you’re teaching in the same room 3 classes in a row, you’ll also be chatting & on your feet not only the whole class hour, but also in between classes too.  So from 3-7:30 pm I was talking straight through.  That said, I was exhausted when I was done last night and my feet were killing me. Note to self, no heels when teaching at RootsTech .  Today I’ve been dragging a bit too, BUT I promised my class some info about Zoning on here today, so here it goes--- Zoning , a new tool from FamilySearch .  It’s in beta mode, so it’s likely to change from what I give here, but for now this is where things are at.  It’s a great alternative to indexing for those peeps who are burnt out from Indexing but are still not quite ready to dig into research, OR for those of us who research and just need a new thing to “mix

So I haven’t blogged about it yet, but amidst my chaotic summer/fall transition, I was extended a call to serve in the Family History Center here in town.  In the LDS church, we are offered callings to serve in the church, as the church has lay clergy, and thus part of our membership is service in the church.  So, I was ecstatic, or should have been , but due to my over worked , over scheduled , and stressed out life, I didn’t feel a ton of excitement at the time.  I completely switched into SURVIVAL mode, and I think I’m finally starting to surface again.  Big PTA events are behind us now and we just successfully hosted our first big Youth Family History Event at the center, and I’m starting to feel that super excitement that comes with a new calling, especially one that you already have such a passion for. But I must acknowledge the fact that I had awesome fellow volunteers who made the last couple months rewarding amongst all of the chaos, I’m super blessed to be surrounded by

I was super excited to read the news about this new feature earlier this week, but I wanted to take the time to play with the new tool before I blogged to profess my love. It is a WONDERFUL feature, I'm so excited to have it available now, thank you MyHeritage for being on board. Now if we could just get Ancestry and FindMyPast on board.  I can honestly say that having this tool will drive my research to MyHeritage first before I go searching on the other sites for records, just for convenience purposes.  The tool works slick, and easy.  The only problem I've stumbled upon so far is that it wasn't available with all the records I've found, but the ones it was available on, it worked like a charm. Thank you for making my busy life just that much more simple!

This week's class for BYU One of my favorite parts about Family History is finding unique ways to display my finds, especially the stories & photos that I happen upon...I feel like I constantly find new fun ways to share my family's history, so this class was designed to help you have that same kind of fun.

 So I had the coolest experience when I originally created this book about 4 years ago.  I had been really wanting to find a way to get my kids engaged with their family tree, but they were 5 & 3--how . . . . ?? Then came one late night after attending a genealogy conference.  I was struggling to sleep when the words to almost an entire poem just started coming together in my head, totally unsolicited (at least at that moment).  The poem was what I ended up putting together into a book for the kids. The gathering took some time, getting all the grandparents' input and all the photos together, but I used a program called Mixbook , and everything came together pretty slick.  I ordered it and got it delivered in the mail a short time later. When it came, I had a picnic with the kids and gave them the book as a present. They've used it a lot.  Ella has kept it in her church bag and they use it as a quiet book at church---SUCCESS!! BUT--Here I find myself 3 years later, with a t

June's been a crazy month...So I write to catch up after the craziness.  June is always crazy for me on the mom front.  In fact, I haven't had a chance to do family history the whole month, and I'm missing it terribly, BUT FamilySearch is down today and so I blog.  June is always when we completely over schedule our kids, visit the pool far too many hours, and, this year, get all medical procedures done because we've already hit our out-of-pocket max on our health insurance and it's starting over next month. YIKES! I write from my lovely Adirondack chair overlooking a beautiful mountainous lake.  Why from the chair, you ask? Because due to said insurance circumstance I had a last-minute knee surgery last week, and to tie it into family history, I inherited some crappy knees! Needless to say it's left me fairly immobile, and so I write. Some exciting news that is blog worthy amidst the crazy-busy family schedule though...I was able to attend the Sunday BYU Fami

We love National Parks in our family.  We work them into our travel plans as often as we can and we work on Junior Ranger badges with the kids to help them gain an appreciation and love for them too.  Our brainwashing is slowly working, and we find them using cute lines like “Look, there’s ANOTHER great view!” and “I want to stay here forever,"--proud moments in our family. So, when we planned our most recent Yellowstone trip I had no intention of involving family history in the trip, unless it was a little indexing or app hint matching during the drive to or from the Park.  BUT don’t worry, I found a way… My hubby stayed back at the cabin one afternoon in order to get the baby a nap, so the older kids and I went off exploring around Old Faithful.  During our exploring, we decided to take a tour of the Old Faithful Inn .  It’s a magnificent historic building and I was thrilled when I found out they do tours, and to my surprise, the kids actually wanted to do it, too. I think the

Thank you ANCESTRY !! Just wanted to pass this on to any fellow mom genealogists who can't always make it to the conferences, a great opportunity to catch some of the classes while in the swing of Spring Time mAdDNesS with the kiddos!  You can watch live or at your convenience on the Live Stream site until July 5th. Quoted from the Jamboree 2016 mailer, " Last week, we announced the schedule for the pay-per-view  live  streamed sessions from the Genetic Genealogy 2016 Conference. Thank you to genealogists around the world who have already registered for the DNA pay-per-view sessions.   Now, it's time to release the rest of the news you've been waiting for - the schedule for the  FREE  live streaming from the 47th Annual Southern California Genealogy Jamboree. We are very grateful to our Diamond Sponsor, Ancestry.com, which is underwriting the cost of the free Jamboree Live Stream. With their generous support, SCGS is once again able to bring you 14 hours of high-qualit

I had a huge stack (as you can see) of binders to digitize, but the pages were those sticky kind where it’s like photograph suicide to remove…the only solution, a book scanner.  So to the BYU Family History Library I headed this weekend.  I couldn’t carry them all in so in enters the double stroller, I knew motherhood was preparing me for more than just mothering. Sadly, that amazing book scanner I used last time was apparently on trial at the time and has since been removed.  To those of you interested in using it, they said they’ll be purchasing one in the 2017 budget year, so it will return in the future.  BUT--I had a task to do so I decided to check out the other options for book scanners.  They have some amazing flatbed scanners that really do a great job and are quite quick…12 huge binders of photos and 4 hours later I was done. The great news is that during my time in the library I made some friends.  I love chatting it up with people and helping when I can, so I found myself

So I know this isn't exactly part of the topic for my blog, but seeing as technology is a huge part of my life and a huge part of why I love doing genealogy I feel that it is in fact appropriate. I spent several hours today trying to figure out how to install the Chrome App Launcher on my new computer.  I am an avid user of Google and many of its applications, and I often try to encourage people to use their product because they offer so many amazing and wonderful features. They have tons of great resources even for genealogy, but that's a post for another day.  So when I discovered the Chrome App Launcher a few years ago, I was thrilled because frankly I use Google stuff way more often than I use any Windows apps but I have a PC.  That said, after hours of getting stuck without an option to download the launcher, I finally found this article, Retiring Chrome App Launcher .  Basically Google has decided to discontinue support of the Chrome App Launcher, and remove it, so obviou