Liv's Tree House

Engaging the Family in Telling Your Family Stories Class Materials: Slides Syllabus Other Links: Liv's Animations

This photo of my 2nd great grandparents on my dad's side, Charles Arthur Welch & Mary Loiza Hinckley, has always been my very favorite family history photo.  I have it displayed prominently in my new home "family history" office.  There's something so perfect about their middle-aged selves, the years worth of ups and downs that they have surely experienced together, holding their heads so slightly tilted with affection, softly expressing their sincerest feelings of pure love that warms my heart.  In a time when most photos were stern or solemn, these two so naturally held a pose that shows their truest affections.  I love the soft smile on my dear grandmother's face, it tells of sincere and content happiness and love.  When I look at it I'm reminded of the times when I just breathe in the same feelings as I admire the wonderful man I was lucky enough to marry, with him everything is just whole.  I feel much the same about Charles's expression, but in c...

Why do you think it’s important to share family history with children? Admittedly, I struggled with this post. Not because I don’t believe that it’s important to share family history with my kids, but it’s hard to put my finger on WHY. In preparation for this post the following video kept coming to mind, so I dug it up to share with you. If just the simple concept of the importance of family to kids can be so powerful  (all for a food commercial, might I add), how powerful then can family be if you include generations of them? Generations of ancestors who came before, who sacrificed, who worked hard, who both succeeded and failed…generations of love and of hurt…generations of pressing on, and generations of families. It's been my personal experience that Mulan isn't too far off.  I say that with a bit of a tease, but there is something true about drawing on your ancestors' power, their strengths, and their help; and if you don't know them, and you don't know their...

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 i...

Aside from my brackets being shot after 2 days of basketball madness, my parents' basement flooded. It was a mess.  THANKFULLY about 5 years ago I went on a digitizing craze.  During that time I digitized almost all my mom had as far as family photos and documents were concerned.  Unfortunately, due to my mad organization skills tons of the photos I had digitized got ruined because they were all together in folders and the dampness of the house made the photographs all stick together.  Ironically the ones heaved in drawers were totally fine because they weren't tightly packed. LESSON LEARNED. But after a full weekend of cleaning, sifting, and sorting here's a peak at my mess that I have to sift through now... Apparently after my uncle passed away my mom had inherited a lot of his documents and photos which also had a lot of family history stuff in there. Look at this gem... It's a family log from 1901.  It has tons of names and dates of births, deaths, marriages...

Scanning or digitizing your family treasure trove can seem to be an incredibly daunting task, but it doesn't have to be.  If you take a few minutes to educate yourself on the basics then you can make an informed decision about the best route for you and your archive. I got going on it myself in 2010.  I admit photos was an obsession before family history entered my radar--I'd say photos, digital scrap-booking, and family movies was what led me to discover my love for genealogy.  So I'm pretty sure I am genetically hard-wired this way.  So with 6 years of experience under my belt and research on the subject I'll give you the basics. First of all, assess what you've got, and what you can and want to digitize.  You'll likely be surprised at the things that you'll find as you start to dig.  Things like photos and documents are easy to scan, but many of us have things like film, tape, & heirlooms that can be a little more tricky to digitize. Next, learn a bi...

I'm bound to write more on this subject in the future, but I've gotta give a sneak preview.   Cloud by Daplie is a new product I discovered on Innovators Alley at RootsTech --by far the best addition to RootsTech this year btw, but that's beside the point. The product isn't quite ready for market yet, but I got a sneak peak today giving some feedback on the product to the developers.  For those of you who are sick of paying monthly fees for online storage, you're going to LOVE this product! The slogan they used when explaining it to me was "We're taking back the internet." I love it! Who doesn't want more control and to understand better where their stuff is stored? Basically just imagine being able to purchase as much storage space as you need--NO limits and NO monthly fees--awesome right?!!  You just purchase the hard drive space you need and the attachable server and voila, you can access your files anytime, anywhere, from any device. Plus, the...