Liv's Tree House

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 t...

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 ...

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 i...

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...