Report from the Mesa Family History Expo

I'm back. We have been partying again. I so love conferences. I brought you some pictures this time.


I caravaned down to Mesa with Dear Myrtle and Janene Morgan of Family History Expos. Myrt and I were so excited to see 1.99 gas in Panguitch we stopped to take a picture. I thought I would never see that again in my life. Hopefully Panguitch can be an example to the rest of the world huh? Myrt and Janene are great Caravan partners and we had a great time even though it was a long drive. Myrt bought a GPS system while we were down there and we all had a good laugh yesterday while she was telling us about how testy it was on the way home. The lady apparently gets louder and yells at her when she isn't obedient about turning left. You'll have to ask her about it.

We got everything started for Kimberly Savage's baby shower. Do you like the invitations I did? We are all about getting things out where you can see them :-). We are so excited for her. So we did posters announcing the new blog: http://www.babyshowerforkim.blogspot.com/. How else would you expect us to do it? You can find all the information there about where and when and the virtual webcast of it all. It sounds like the "reality" shower is going to be held at the Family History Library in Salt Lake. That would be an appropriate place.

The weather was gorgeous. It is so hard to come home. I can see why people retire to Arizona.
The people at this conference were especially warm and appreciative. I think we have found a wonderful place for a conference every winter. There were lots of people very excited to have us there. You can see the opening session was outside and we had a great crowd. How nice it is to be somewhere where you could plan a gathering for November outside and know it was going to be comfortable. Of course I'm hoping they don't ever plan anything for Mesa in July or August. :-)




I ran around like a one-armed Wallpaper hanger all through the conference. This one was an exciting one for me. If you read my blog, you know how I get along with our printers. Kim didn't come to this conference and my relationship with this plotter held true. I did manage to print everything I needed to, but there was alot of electronic manipulating going on. My lecture on Monday was preceded by a discovery that my powerpoint slides were MIA about an hour before the time slot, and the line at the booth was so long I was almost late to my lecture on Saturday. Lots of things to keep my heart rate up since the hotel didn't have a gym this time. Next time I think I'll just go for the gym--and make sure I bring our printing Guru. (Although--don't tell him--but I think I learned enough that I could pull the printing off easier next time. I'm actually getting pretty good at it.)

There was a great payoff for me when one person at the conference ordered a chart for his Mother Friday and then brought her in and surprised her with it on Saturday. She was so excited. And we had several wonderful people who were so appreciative. One man said that he was glad I wasn't charging according to how satisfied he was or he would really have to pay alot. I know we helped several people get their information out where they could hang it up on the wall and write in research ideas and findings. And I know we got several databases out and on the wall for upcoming family reunions where they could have family members write on the chart and add information that they needed to collect. And another great payoff this time was getting to meet some fun fellow bloggers. Kathryn Lake Hogan of http://www.looking4ancestors.com/ and Coleen McHugh of http://omchorations.blogspot.com/. I also got to meet Annaleise Taylor Dearinger and many other friends from facebook. It is so fun to get to know people you know online. And of course it is great to see all of our dear old friends that we get to see at all the conferences. We really enjoy the people we get to work with.

And Myrt made sure everyone got a chance to tie the cute quilt she brought for Kimberly. She even had some of the guys helping--it is really only a square knot from scouts right? And could we have matched everything any better? I think a fun time was had by all. (Except maybe my Mother who I brought to be able to go to classes but only got to one because she was drafted to help at the booth.--She says she had a good time though.) So go check out http://www.babyshowerforkim.blogspot.com/ and plan on coming to the next party.