Genealogy

Mum and I have been preparing for our stake temple week next week, looking at our family history to see whose temple work we could do.
I have enjoyed family history ever since I took it as one of my liberal classes at Church College in 1991. Over the years I have collected letters and certificates, communicated with distant family members, been to a reunion and a conference, and sat for hours on the computer finding shipping lists and census records and parish registers. I love it.
I probably have few hobbies/interests that are for me alone. Usually I'm busy taking the kids to the things they like to do, or looking after them while Nate is doing his things. Although he encourages me to find something to do, I haven't yet found that something that kindles any fire. I'm certainly not a physical person, I don't enjoy exercise at all although I have tried to go swimming this past year (but only cause the physio told me I had to). I played hockey for a number of years but now it is enough for me to run around after the children. I know I know... if I exercised I'd have more energy to do more things, but really - why commit to something you just KNOW you will not stick at? To something you don't enjoy? Flag that.
Instead I love to read, I love to do family history, I like both the productive and social side of going to work and I like to be in the background.
Anyway - back to genealogy...
My ancestors are mainly from Scotland but also from Denmark on my Nana's side. It is the Danish line I have been working on this week. My great-great-great-great grandmother is Helene Margrethe Larsdatter born in 1812. She had a daughter and a son to Lars Christensen but did not marry him. He was a soldier born in 1816. It is through the daughter that I descend (she was raised by Ane Marie Christensdatter who I'm thinking is her Dad's sister, maybe). She also had another son to another man but did not marry him either. Rebel. :-) For years I did not know who her parents were, but this week I found them as I scrolled through the Parish records which the Danish government puts on the internet for free. Love that!
Lars Hansen and Johanne Marie Jensdatter were married in 1799 and they had five children - all girls. I haven't found the parents births yet as it is getting close to the limit of when the parish records began but I found a census for a couple with the same name and if it is them then they were born in 1751 and 1770. Exciting huh?
The new FamilySearch program the church has is also a wealth of information. The old one just had info but the new one you can link your family members together. Through that I've found some descendants of Lars and Johanne's daughter Ane. So you can find all these people in your family tree you didn't know were there!
Mum and I have also been a little stumped on Alexander McLeod, my great-great-great grandfather. His son Donald's birth certificate says he was born in Boston USA in 1857 but I was going through some papers I've had for over 10 years and there was a letter sent to Mum's Mum in 1968 from his other son Thomas and it says he was born in 1848 in Scotland! Mum got his death certificate and it at least gave us his parents names - Donald McLeod and Euphemia McKinnon. It's a start and more than we had a few weeks ago, so that's the next line to find more on.
Okay gotta run - it's time for Leah's gymnastics. She LOVES gym! So does Ammon.

Papa's Birthday

Just thought I'd show you a pic of the birthday cake the girls and I made for Papa for his birthday last weekend. Yum!
Was by far the easiest birthday cake I've made, and a huge hit with the littlie's.