Dear RootsMagic,

Dear RootsMagic,
I LOVE YOU!
Thank you, Thank You, THANK YOU!

Friday RootsMagic released an update to their program that included an AutoMatch feature. I am eternally grateful for how much work this feature saved me. My computer started matching names early Friday evening and spent the next 60 hours working to match the names in my mom's family history file.

60 UNINTERRUPTED HOURS!

I kept praying that my internet connection would not be interrupted and that my computer would not crash!

Do you know how long it would have taken me to match up names? I had been working for 3 months, spent countless hours and had finally got 4,000 names matched up. I had done all the easy Swedish names and the remaining 44,000 names were the hard, time consuming names. I was planning on at least 3 to 4 years to get all the names matched. Thanks to AutoMatch I now have 41,277 names matched leaving me just 7659 names to manually match. There is still a lot of work to be done but the task is no longer quite so overwhelming!

To anyone who hasn't used new.familysearch that is probably just a bunch of gibberish but for me it's a huge blessing!

More about RootMagic's AutoMatch:

RootsMagic developed the AutoMatch feature over weeks of experimentation and guidance from FamilySearch. The AutoMatch examines each person in your RootsMagic file, searches the FamilySearch database for the person, and after carefully comparing them, matches them together if they are the same; all without requiring user intervention. "What used to take days of manual work is now done automatically in only a few hours," said Buzbee. "You can start the AutoMatch, leave it running while you do something else, and return later to find most of the matches found." Although the match is made automatically, no actual data is transferred without the user requesting it.

"Our users told us that this was one of the more time-consuming aspects of working with new FamilySearch," explained Bruce Buzbee, president of RootsMagic, Inc. "If you had an average-sized file with 6000 people, it may take you several days of repetitive work just tomatch each one up with new FamilySearch. People want to be able to jump in and actually work with new FamilySearch and matching by hand was always a tedious first step." Buzbee added, "The new AutoMatch feature does most of this grunt work for you so you can just begin sharing data about your ancestors."

Welcome Cadbury

Well if we are going to have a bunny we may as well have 2 so they can keep each other company.
Hershey's brother Cadbury is our newest addition.

Booking Through Thursday

8 books this week bringing me to 44 total this year. If I kept up at this rate I'd be able to read 200 books this year. I'm NOT aiming for that as a goal because I started out reading a lot last year and by mid year got burned out and slowed way down. There are just so many books I want to read! It seems like for every book I read I find another dozen books I want to read.

I listened to 3 of these and read the other 5, they were all pretty quick reads.

The Water Horse by Dick King-Smith is a quick read aimed at older elementary aged kids.

Book #4 The Grey King is my favorite so far in the Dark Is Rising Series by Susan Cooper.

We watched a Christmas movie based on the art of James Christensen. I liked the characters so I got this book A Journey of the Imagination that talks about his artwork.

Cute & Clean. I highly recommend Just One Wish by Janette Rallison.

Since Easter is coming soon I decided to read this book on having a Christ-Centered Easter.

Jane Austen is one of my favorites. I don't remember ever having read Lady Susan.

Airman by Eoin Colfer is a great story. I think teenage boys may enjoy it.

I'd seen the movie but never read the book Babe by Dick King-Smith

Wake Up Wednesday

Morning came early today. I've actually been getting up early this week. On Sunday we had a fabulous talk given that motivated me to arise an hour earlier than usual for prayers and scriptures. This morning I woke up at 5:10 - earlier than planned but there was no point in going back to bed since my alarm was going off 20 minutes later.

There has been a lot said on arising early, but it's been counsel I've ignored.

“…cease to sleep longer than is needful; retire to thy bed early, that ye may not be weary; arise early, that your bodies and your minds may be invigorated.” (D&C 88: 124).

Harold B. Lee - “Go to bed early and get up early. If you do, your body and mind will become rested, and then, in the quiet of those early morning hours, you will receive more flashes of inspiration and insight than at any other time of the day.”

Ezra Taft Benson - “Early to bed and early to rise is still good counsel.”

Monday I was tired and had a headache by bedtime but yesterday I felt fabulous. My goal is to make this a life long habit. Wish me luck and kids that will actually go to sleep at bedtime so I can get to bed on time to get the sleep I need.

Maintain It Monday

A new week!
I'm off to a great start today. I decide to get up an hour earlier than the kids and it's paying off. Normally I'd have just got the kids off to school and just be starting my day but instead I've already got a jump start on my day. A load or laundry and dishes are done, scriptures, prayers and exercise are also already done. I'm going to read to Kylie and then start on my housework while listening to a book on my MP3 player. I decided Mondays from now on have to be spent at home. The house seems to suffer over the weekend and I need to be home getting it back in order. Otherwise it gets too out of hand and I spend the rest of the week trying to catch up. Hopefully the next 3 hours of my day will be as productive as the first 3 were.

Welcome Hershey

Confession I am neither a pet lover nor a sports lover. Nothing wrong with either but neither is at the top of my list.

That said let me tell you about my day.

Bryce is playing Border League Basketball and they had 2 games today. One at 11:00 and a second one at 1:00. Not enough time in between to be worth going home so that ended up being 3 1/2 hours out of my day being the good, supportive mom taking Bryce to his games and out to eat in between. (I'm not actually really complaining and I don't regret that time, I enjoyed watching Bryce play!)

While I was gone to the games Brian and Kim had a father daughter talk and somehow Kim convinced Brian that she needed a bunny rabbit. The big softie that Brian is he caved and agreed. Thus we are the proud owners of a bunny rabbit named Hershey.

Alas what can I say when they have such big smiles on their faces and are so happy other than Welcome Hershey! Perhaps my children will make me both a pet lover and a sports lover before my life is over.

And hopefully Hershey fares better than our previous pets.

Blue & Gold Banquet

Last night was the Cubscout Blue & Gold Banquet. Bradley made this poster for the banquet and is proudly standing by it while chowing on his sloppy joe.

Booking Through Thursday

2 books this week bringing my total to 36 so far this year. Life has been a little crazy with being out of town for Spring Break and I've not found much time to read lately.

We listened to Shadow Puppets while driving to and from CA. Another great book by Orson Scott Card that kept me awake while driving late into the night.

I read Greenwich by Susan Cooper. It's the 3rd book in The Dark is Rising Series.

I've started on The Grey King which is the 4th book in the series and will hopefully get that book plus the 5th book finished this coming week.

Trunk Monkey

It won't be too much longer until our kids are dating. I think we need to invest in a Trunk Monkey!

Happy St. Patricks Day

Dear Bryce,
I'm sorry I forgot to tell you it is St. Patrick's Day today. I felt horrible when I realized you went to school with no green on. I even went in search of something green for you to wear, I was going to drive over to your school and bring it to you. The only problem is you own nothing green! I searched your drawers and through the clean and dirty clothes piles only to realize that I could find nothing green to bring to you. We did find a pair of scout pants but somehow I doubted you would be willing to wear those at school. I hope some teacher takes pity on you and gives you a green sticker or that you friends don't pinch you very hard (not likely). When you get home you can pinch me for being a slacker mom!
Love,
Mom

Tackle It Tuesday

Daylight Savings Stinks!
I want my hour back.

Morning came so early and meant taking Brett to seminary in the dark again. Once he and Bryce were off I came home and went back to bed for an hour. Gone were my good intentions of getting a great start to my day by working out during that hour.

It's now 11 and at least I got my workout done. That's at least 1 thing tackled. I'm now headed to the shower and then off to a PTA meeting and to run a few errands. Today is going to fly by and I'm not going to get much else tackled. My laundry pile is still a mile high and the rest of the house is going downhill. Activity days after school means I won't even be home to get the kids to do their chores and homework.

Kylie-isms

Kylie: When is it going to be Chinese New Year?
Me: I have no idea.
Kylie: Cause it's my favorite!

Huh?
Her favorite?
We've never celebrated it, don't know what you do to celebrate it and I don't even know when it is -- so how can it be her favorite?
I think she's been watching a little too much Ni Hao Kai-lan on Nick Jr.

And so I could answer her question of when it is I looked it up - It was on February 14th this year and will be on Feb 3rd in 2011. Hopefully by next February she will have forgotten and have a new favorite.

Maintain It Monday

I didn't get out of bed until 10:30 this morning. When I went to bed the plan was to get up at 7:00 to exercise with Brian. However I slept horrible. I had an ear ache and sore throat and woke up multiple times during the night. I'm feeling better this morning but I'm definately starting my day late and moving slow.

My plan for the day is to simply get back on top of life. We haven't even unloaded the suburban yet and I have a weeks worth of laundry to catch up on.

Unload Suburban and put everything away
Vacuum Suburban
Dishes & Kitchen Clean
Make a good dent in the laundry
Get Kids to put away their clean clothes and clean their rooms
Pay Bills
Check Library site and gather up books that are due
Check grocery ads
Get Kids to do their chores
Clean off my desk
Exercise
Eat Healthy

That should keep me busy most of the day.

9:00 P.M. - I didn't get my entire list done :( Half the Suburban is unloaded, dishes got done but the kitchen didn't get finished, I did 3 loads of laundry but it hardly made a dent, oh well there is always tomorrow.

Trip to California

We went to California for Spring Break. It was a quick trip. We left here Tuesday evening after the boys got back from doing baptisms at the temple. We went to Griffith Park on Wednesday after going to lunch with grandpa, the aquarium on Thursday and Disneyland on Friday. We drove home Saturday. It was a great trip! I posted a few of the pictures we took in posts that will follow this one.

Disneyland

We had a fabulous day at Disneyland. Boy did we get our money worth! Oh wait our trip was Free! We used our vouchers from Disney's Get A Day Program and the reward points from my Disney credit card. The parking, our meals and tickets didn't cost us anything except the money we paid for material to make blankets.
We walked the gates at 8:00 and were on the first Dumbo ride of the day!

We then worked our way through all the rides in Fantasyland.

In our first hour at Disneyland we rode on 10 rides! We did everything in Fantasyland. It was a great start to the day.

Kylie and Brian ready to ride Gadget's Go Coaster.

Kylie saw Minnie Mouse and she ran to the line to get her picture taken.

Then they chased after Goofy to get a picture with him.

Bradley chased Goofy down too to get a picture.

The favorite ride of the day was probably Splash Mountain. Bradley got to ride on it 4 times thanks to the single rider line.

The first ride he went on we couldn't see him because he was blocked by me. He was so disappointed. The bigger kids went to do single rider but I thought he was too little to go alone. There was going to be no peace until he got to ride again so he went with grandpa to the single rider line. I then took him in the single rider line for his 3rd time and he went all by himself for his 4th ride.

Disney's parade is not really a parade this year. A few floats come along and then they stop and the characters and people dance. It's entertaining and the younger kids had fun but give me a regular parade any day. There's nothing like the Main Street Electrical Parade

Brad, Kim & Kylie on the Conga line.

Waiting to go see Captain EO. I totally remembered it. I'm not sure how many times I saw it during the 10 years it was at Disneyland but I know I saw it multiple times.

As is our usual tradition our final ride of the night was the rockets. We start with Dumbo and end with the Rockets.My friend Melissa and her family met us there in the evening and we went on a few rides and watched the fireworks with them. We also ran into our neighbors the Frames.

We had a great day! We rode nearly every ride in the park with the exception of Indiana Jones which was broken, Nemo (yawn-it had a long line and is so boring it's torturous and not worth waiting for) and the Monorail which was closed for firework and then only open for one way trips. We also skipped the Tiki room (yawn) and innoventions (although Brett would have loved this one). River's of America was being renovated so there were no boat rides available but it was cool to see the river without water.

Kylie was a trouper. We boarded the tram at 7:30 am and got back on the tram at 11:30 pm. Kylie made it the entire day with no nap. But once she got on the tram she was out! It was a great day at Disneyland!

Aquarium of the Pacific

Grandpa paid for us to go to The Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. He had to work and couldn't come with :( but we had a fun time anyway.

We went to an interactive children's program where we thought they were going to learn about sharks. Instead it was a play they put on. At least the 3 younger kids had fun.

We spent a long time petting the sharks and rays.

Kylie didn't want to touch them but had no problem feeding them.

We enjoyed the aquarium!

After visiting the aquarium we walked out to see the lighthouse and look across the water at the Queen Mary.