52 Ancestors: Week 7 Valentine

From Amy's email: Week 7: Valentine

Is there a love story in your family tree? Maybe a couple was married on Valentine's Day or you have a valentine that one ancestor gave to another. Maybe you have an ancestor named Valentine.

Since I don't know any love stories of my ancestors, heck I don't even know how my parents meet. I decided I needed to write about how my husband and I meet. So here you go.

Richard and I meet on Saturday July 20th of 1991 at a 

LDS Singles church dance. I knew right off the bat that he was younger than myself. He is 8 years young. We danced and talked and he even laughed at a story I told.  I thought well at least he has a sense of humor and I will have someone to speak with at the dances. I was impressed with the fact that he wasn’t crazy about his job as a bank teller but he was doing something to change that situation. He was going to school to learn a new trade. He walked me out to my car and said good night and that was that. 

Most of the guys I meet told me I wasn’t their type, I was too strong, too intelligent, too independent, too intimidating and too everything else. I am not sure what is wrong with being intelligent, independent, or strong. So, it was nice to have a down to earth guy to speak with.

A month later, August 17th, I went back to the same dance, I saw him standing by himself so I went over to say hi. He said, “I have looked for you at every Friday and Saturday night dance and every Sunday night Fireside.” Well I wasn’t accustomed to guys looking for me most of them went the other way when I came by. So, I stood there in shock and thought to myself, OK, just let it in Mary. We dance some more and talked. 

He invited me out to eat after the dance. We planned to meet at Denny’s on Southern and Country Club. I arrived first and I was waiting. About 15 minutes went by and no Richard. I thought if he isn’t here in 5 more minutes I will leave. He made it before his time was up. I was actually getting up to walk out. He had run out of gas across the street from a gas station. He had to push his car to the gas station to fill up his tank. 

Where we meet for breakfast

I had met my share of strange guys and I decided I was going to lay it all out. I told him over breakfast that, “There wasn’t a man who walks on the face of the earth worth taking crap from.” I can’t remember if I said it or just thought it, “And I define crap.” That did not scare him off. He made sure he had my last name and my phone number this time.  He was upset with himself for not asking for it when we meet in July. 

He called on Wednesday evening while on break from his classes. After the first couple of weeks we were dating every Friday and Saturday night after that. He was working, managing apartments and going to school to be an airplane mechanic. So, we didn’t see each other every day, which I think was a good thing and allowed us some down time from each other. I didn’t meet his children until October though he wanted me to meet them sooner. They were cute and liked me right off the bat. Of course, that changed a little after we had been married for a while and they came to live with us in my 950 Square foot 2 bedroom two bath town home. 

Our engagement picture

He proposed in January after we had attended a relationship workshop, Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus. We both learned a lot about relationships and the difference between men and women. After the workshop he has taken me home and said he had to go run an errand and he would be right back. He came back with fresh flowers and a red I love you balloon. He got all serious, nervous and asked me to marry him.  Since we knew it was the right thing to do we set the date for March 13th a Friday. He wanted to marry on the 17th so he could remember the date of our first date but that was a Tuesday and I didn’t want to get married on a Tuesday. 

Our wedding day

We were married in the Mesa Arizona Temple. It was warm that day and I was very hot in that dress taking pictures.

He tells people the Lord put me right in his lap. I had sat down by someone I knew and Richard was on my other side. When I finished speaking to my friend, I turned to Richard and said, “Hi, what’s your name?” It was his first singles dance after his divorce that was 2 years earlier. I was only going to one dance a month because they were boring and painful. There is only so much rejection a person can take. I tell him I had to move to Arizona for him to find me. 

Our Wedding day with our kids

This March, 2018 will be our 26th Wedding anniversary. It hasn’t always been easy with blended families and all, his parents dying and two sisters, taking in and raising our great nieces and all that life brings but it has been worth it. 

Last year on our 25th Anniversary trip.

Favorite Name Week 6

From Amy Johnson Crow's email this week. 

Favorite name could be a name of an ancestor that makes you smile. Perhaps it's an unusual name.

Minnie Elizabeth 

My Favorite name is Minnie Elizabeth from my ancestors. She is my maternal grandmother. The family lore is she didn't like her name Minnie. I don't know why she didn't like it. Maybe she didn't like it because there was an older sister who reportedly died at sea as the family came to America, who was also named Minnie. I have not been able to prove or disprove that story yet. I know a lot of countries used the same name over and over. I am glad we no longer do that. 

So because I learned she did not like Minnie I always refer to her as Minnie Elizabeth. I was named after both my grandmothers, so I am Mary Elizabeth. So our middle name is a common link. 

There are several posts about her on my side bar, just look for Minnie Elizabeth. She sounds like a bit of a dynamite person. She was a suffragette for the right of women to vote. She was a widow at a young age. 

She died too young. 

Irfanview How to Use

In the class I took it was recommended to download the IrfanView software from CNET. The reason given is this site is more secure then the official IrfanView website. I have no knowledge to confirm or deny that info. I just followed directions. 

Here is the link. Plus a screen shot of it.

Once on the page look for this Download button. 

Be aware there are many tempting buttons to click on, 

so use the right one.

However you find your downloads you will see is named iview450_setup. That is correct.

You can pin this flat cat to your task bar if you want. 

If you get a screen like this without cross hairs, 

so you are unable to take a screen shot or a capture.

Do the following steps.

Right Click on the Flat Cat

Right Click on IrfanView 4.50

Left Click on Properties

This dialogue box will open and in the highlighted blue line type in " /capture=4. You can see it in my line. Yes there is a space between the quote mark and the back slash.

Now how do I get my screen shots to make one picture. Be mindful that some things will be easier to line up and others not so easy. 

So in my example for some strange reason I want only the information on my Grandfather for an article and I don't want all the births of his 10 siblings. 

Here is part of the page with all the siblings.

I am going to capture the part I want and make sure I grab it from the same place each time and end it in the same place each time. The instructor went between letters in a word. That would drive me crazy to be missing the first letter on each line.  

But each to their own. 

I took this one right in front of the year and at the end of the box. You have to close the dialogue box after you save each image. And click on the flat cat to take a new image there may be another way to do that but I was only shown one way. 

Here are a couple more images I captured. 

and one more.

The instructor saves all his captures to the desktop and just gives them a number, just a number, like 1, 2, 3 etc. This is quick and easy but in reality you can save them to any folder you want. I like the number idea, so you can line them up in order when you go to make one image.

So you have your last capture, and the image is saved. Click on the word image to open a new menu.

When that opens on the drop down menu click on

Create Panorama image.

When the new box opens click on Add images. 

If you hold down the shift key you can bring in all 

your images at once. You will notice my images are not in order. Just highlight the one you want to move and you can move it up or down.

Once they are all in order click on Create Image. 

You want it in Vertical direction.

And with one more click you get.......

It isn't aligned up perfectly but close enough for this post. 

With a little practice I bet I will get better and 

this was a long string of events. 

I hope this helps. 

Leave a comment if you need more help. 

Happy Searching!

Week 5 Census

The Week 5 prompt is "In the Census." What intriguing find have you made in a census? What has a series of census records shown you? Do you have an ancestor who constantly ages only 7 years between censuses? (Those are fun!)

I was thinking of using my extra post that I did last week for this topic. Since I found so many interesting details about my mother on the 1940 Census. But that felt a little bit like cheating. You can read about it here if you want.

I also thought about sharing the first census I ever worked on, where I found my Grandfather as a son. It was an exciting moment for me. A first find after being away from Genealogy for a very long time. 

I have decided to go in a completely different direction.
On Tuesday I took a class at the Mesa Arizona 

Family Search Library. 

It was on Irfanview, the ultimate image viewer. 

This little free download is very slick. 

I can't wait to use it more. 

If you do decide to use it and download it, it was recommended to the class to download it from CNET. 

I did do that. One of the other students was confused because it comes in as iview.  That is the correct file name. 

So what is so great about this little software. 

Let me show you.

In the 1920 US Census my grandparents are on the bottom of one page and my mother is on the top if the next page. 

I am sure this happens to a lot of people. 

Above are my grandparents and Aunt and Uncle. 

Here is my mother.

And just to get a better idea, here is the top of the Census, with the column names. 

Now with a simple click of a couple of buttons I can make this. All three sections into one imagine. So much nicer for a digital scrapbook or even a paper family history scrapbook. Or even for your digital files or genealogy software.

This was new to me and I feel it is a handy tool and worth sharing. 

Happy Searching!