I love INDEXING!!

The church has put out a wonderful program called, Family Search Indexing. Which is extraction work on your home computer. You go to the website, sign up. You go through the tutorials, and start indexing.

Why do I love it so much?? Because you can if out so many interesting things about people, and occasionally find family. Indexing brings such a spirit to my home. The best thing is that, all of the names that I index will be made public online to everyone.

If you can see this picture pretty well, it was an index that I did yesterday from the 1920s in Alabama. The highlighted portion is the name "Nila." Which for those of you know don't know is my moms name. I thought my grandma made up the name, but voila here it is in the 1920s. You might think that it is lame, but I think it is cool.

I just finished the Washington State death records for 1880-1950 and that was so much fun. I really enjoyed it, I got to learn about different cities from my home state and I got to learn about some of the names Indexed. Granted it is all about perspective.

I am not in to that whole trace you lines back as far as I can go genealogy yet, but I can do my part to help others find their family, while I am waiting for mom to do all the work so I don't have to :).

BYU-Idaho's BUS Program

BYU-Idaho is starting a trial run of their BUS Program. No, it is not a bus route paid for by the University. It is however their Bachelors of University Studies, which is alot like the BGS(Bachelor of General Studies) for BYU. Which mean that I will be able to go back to school and get my degree!!

BYU used to offer the BGS to students who had attened BYU-I, but as soon as I found out about it, they discontinued that part of the BGS. I have been waiting for BYU-I to get something like this started, and have been checking the Universities webpage often. Mom Wierschke is in BYU's BGS program, and we were talking about it one day, and I decided to check BYU-Idahos Continuing Education webpage just for kicks.

There it was the BUS Program in its infancy!! They are only doing a pilot program right now, so I called and got my name on the waiting list, and the director told me that I might not ba able to get in for the fall. They had already sent out their invitations to the select few(35) who get to test the program, I was still hopefully.

About a month passed and yesterday I got an email that said, "We would like to invite you to apply for the Fall 2008 pilot cohort in the BYU-Idaho online degree program." I just about died, I am so excited!! I am actually going to be able to finish my degree, eventhough it is such a general degree.

I have always felt stupid cause I didn't get my degree and it seemed that a lot of other women had it before they had kids. I have always regreted not finishing, although I have never regreted what I did instead by marrying Jon. I have always said that I would go back, I just never knew when. Now here is my chance!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JON!!!!

Even though I am not capable of writing a post about him for his birthday, like the one that he wrote for mine. I did want to let him know that I love him a million times over.

I am so grateful for him and the example he is to me. I love watching him play with Brett, those two share a great bond. Brett loves running to the window to watch Dad come home, then run to the door and give him a huge hug.Brett love his Dad, and I have no doubt that they will be great pals.

Thanks for working your tail off so that we could go to grad school and have a good life, and for always being there for us(at the same time). I am thankful that I married a man who is so patient with me, and who loves his little boy. WE LOVE YOU DADDY!!
*I know that this post was nothing compared to the one you did for me, but you are more eloquent with words then I am!! I do love you so much and hope that you have a Happy Birthday!! You are my rock, Thanks for everything you do for us!

Rain Drops Keep Falling On My Head

We have had a lot of storms lately, one of the worst ones was last week. We got 3+in. in less then 4 hours. The next day as we were out and about, we kept hearing stories of power outages and tornadoes.

Apparently 125,000 people were out of power for 3 days, luckily our lights only flickered. People in our ward were out of power. The paper reported a few days later that, there had been a tornado that came through, just north of us.

I managed to get on the internet and get a few pictures for you. When I saw them I couldn't believe that the storm had been that bad.

As you can see, some people got stranded in parking lots. The storm hit so fast, this was one of the many pictures of peoples cars stranded. Even intersections were buried in water, the Kalamazoo Gazette showed a picture of a car under an over pass that, was buried 3/4 under water.


It knocked down a lot of trees, as you can see. It looks like it just pushed them over.


This picture is a little small(it was big when I downloaded it) but if you look close, you can see a little boy swimming in the street. It is not everyday that you can swim in the street. Anyway that was our storm, the Lord blessed and kept us save and sound, with plenty of electricity!! THANK YOU to the Kalamazoo Gazette for the amazing pictures!

Shipshewana

Mom and I decided that we needed to go birthday shopping for Jon, before his birthday! So as we headed out this morning in 93% humidity(I am a true westerner, I can't breath when the humidity is that high) and storm clouds hanging over us, we contemplated staying home. Still determined to get the job done we left.

Our first stop was Shipshewana (Amish tourist town), we had to take a detour, because there was road construction, but we ran into tons of Amish and I got a few pictures. I have to admit that I felt bad taking pictures(They don't believe in having their pictures taken), but since I promised you pictures, I took them anyway(I can't say that they are too interesting though). after we picked up the part to the lawn mower that we needed, we decided not to finish the rest of the trip to Southbend, due to the menacing clouds overhead(and mom had a bad gut feeling.

WE got home at about 12:00pm, Brett and I took a nap until 2pm. Jon Called from work at 2pm and told mom that 4 countys in north Indiana, had flash flooding(Way to go Mom on that gut feeling)!

Amish Man Riding His Bike!!
An Amish Buggie With Bucket Seats!!(this was our favorite)

The one thing that I thought was crazy was, even though the humidity was really high and it was raining. The Amish had their clothes out on the line, It is completely beyond me how their clothes get dry. I have been told that they do dry, I would have never guessed. I just thought that they were crazy!! The Amish never cease to amaze me!

Brett is walking.....and other news!!

Well the news is kind of old for us, but Brett is officially walking, with few stumbles. We bought him new shoes a few weeks ago, and now he is trying to learn to walk in them!! I uploaded a video, mainly for my family to see, but I hope that the rest of you enjoy it too!


Brett is also cutting two new teeth, which is exciting. Anyone with kids know all about it, the crankiness and sleepless nights. Yes, cutting teeth is always a celebration at first and then a dreaded nightmare that seems like it will never end!!

For the Fourth of July, we washed/waxed the cars, the guys got fishing permits, we are still working on chopping the trees down form the storm that we had while in Colorado, we had a BBQ, and we played games until midnight!!

Today we traveled to Battle Creek, and did a bunch of shopping(we still have tons more to do). We were all exhausted, when we arrived home. So nothing to exciting today.

We do however need YOUR HELP!! Jon still does not have funding for school, which is a big deal. There has been some talk, that he might have to postpone his schooling another year :P, which I am totally against. Because of the economy, funding has been cut short, very short. There is one last chance to get funding, and so we are praying and fasting that we get it. PLEASE pray for us, we need all the prayers we can get(I'll know if you didn't pray:))!!

Thanks for being so dedicated to our, we love each of you!!

Brett Loves To Help His Daddy

Brett Loves to help his Dad!! He was so excited when I took him down stairs, and he saw his Dad putting together his crib. You can already tell that Brett looks up to Jon!!