Once upon a time, there was a boy named Brady and a girl named Sarah who met at the Rain Tree apartments in Provo, Utah. She was 19, working at Pizza Hut and going to college at UVSC. He was 23, working at TGI Friday's and also going to college at UVSC. He asked her on a date; she said yes. On this date at Mi Ranchito they ordered and shared the "macho nacho". They laughed and talked and Sarah paid the bill because Brady "forgot his wallet", but Sarah didn't care, because she was very interested in Brady. The following dates were even more fun. They hiked Angels Landing (Zion's National Park) at night with a full moon, target practicing, "Tribute to the Beatles concert", the Mount Timpanogos Temple open house, kissing, football games, a memorable trip to Grass Valley, California where Sarah grew up, more kissing, meeting his sister, and meeting both of their families. Brady and Sarah both knew they loved each other and wanted to be together always, so, on September 25, 1996, Brady knelt on one knee in front of the newly built Mount Timpanogos Temple to ask Sarah to marry him. She said yes!! They married 3 months later on December 14, 1996. They built a beautiful family together; 3 sons, 2 daughters, and a home that overlooks the Mount Timpanogos Temple. They knew it wouldn't be easy, but they knew it would all be totally worth it!!!

The end. Not really, it's only the beginning.

-Sarah

"Rejoice with your F A M I L Y in the beautiful land of life." -Albert Einstein

-Keep connecting the dots! -Sarah

"A grandfather is someone with silver in his hair and gold in his heart." 
-Author: unknown

What's your favorite memory of your grandfather?

Keep connecting the dots! -Sarah

"The history of our grandparents is remembered not with rose petals but in the laughter and tears of their children and their children’s children. It is into us that the lives of the grandparents have gone. It is in us that their history becomes a future."
-Charles and Ann Morse

Keep connecting the dots! -Sarah

1. “The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation.” -George Washington
   
   
2. "Some people live an entire lifetime and wonder if they have ever made a difference in the world, but the Marines don't have that problem." -Ronald Reagan
   
   
3. "From time to time, the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots." -Thomas Jefferson
   
   
4. “Honor to the soldier and sailor everywhere, who bravely bears his country's cause. Honor, also, to the citizen who cares for his brother in the field and serves, as he best can, the same cause.” -Abraham Lincoln
   
   
5. "How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!"
   -Maya Angelou
   
   
6. "As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them." -John Fitzgerald Kennedy
   
   
7. “Every society needs heroes. And every society has them. The reason we don't often see them is because we don't bother to look." -Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono
   
   
8. "Because all of us believe and understand in the fabric of the common bond of why we call ourselves American is to care for the men and women who wear the uniform; and when they take off the uniform, we care for them when they are veterans."
   -Steve Buyer
   
   
9. "We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude."
   -Cynthia Ozick
   
   
10. "It is easy to take Liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you."
    -Dick Cheney
    
    
11. "While only one day of the year is dedicated solely to honoring our veterans, Americans must never forget the sacrifices that many of our fellow countrymen have made to defend our country and protect our freedoms." -Randy Neugebauer
    
    
12. "The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave..." -Patrick Henry
    
    
13. "In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot." -Mark Twain
    
    
14. "Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death."
    -Omar Bradley
    
    
15. "Without heroes, we are all plain people, and don't know how far we can go."  -Bernard Malamud
    
    
16. "Nurture your minds with great thoughts, to believe in the heroic makes heroes."
    -Benjamin Disraeli
    
    
17. "On this Veterans Day, let us remember the service of our veterans, and let us renew our national promise to fulfill our sacred obligations to our veterans and their families who have sacrificed so much so that we can live free." -Dan Lipinski
    
    
18. "Caring for veterans shouldn't be a partisan issue. It should an American one."
    -Jennifer Granholm
    
    
19. "You'd have to go a long way to find someone who was more proud and grateful for what our veterans have done for all of us." -Jim Davis
    
    
20. "The willingness of America's veterans to sacrifice for our country has earned them our lasting gratitude." -Jeff Miller
    
    
21. "America's veterans embody the ideals upon which America was founded more than 229 years ago." -Steve Buyer
    
    
22. "Twenty-five million veterans are living among us today. These men and women selflessly set aside their civilian lives to put on the uniform and serve us." Steve Buyer
    
    
23. "We owe our World War II veterans - and all our veterans - a debt we can never fully repay." -Doc Hastings
    
    
24. "I do not fear an army of lions, if they are led by a lamb. I do fear an army of sheep, if they are led by a lion." -Alexander the Great
    
    
25. "This will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave." -Elmer Davis

Did you know, the most popular names in America in 1880 were William and Mary? Even without the statistics of the federal census records, most of us who love family history know this to be true. The rankings of these two most common names have slightly changed since then. Now let's jump ahead 132 years to the year 2012 where we find the most popular baby names to be  Jacob and Sophia. Surprisingly, the name William is still popular and ranked #5 for the most popular baby names in 2012. Unfortunately, Mary did make the top 10 list.

This got me thinking. I have always wondered if my name was as popular as I thought. Well, thanks to the United States Government Official Social Security site, I was able to find my name, Sarah. It ranked #11 out of 100 most popular names in the last 100 years; from 1913-2012.

This morning, as I was working on my family history, I found a BIG surprise; my great, great grandfather's Civil War draft registration record. I never knew he served in the Civil War; this changed everything. You can only imagine how excited I was. So, how did I find this? It was on accident while I was researching another ancestor (isn't that how it usually happens?) I just happened to notice one of those little green leaves, "Ancestry hints" on Ancestry.com. I clicked on the leaf next to his name and it brought me to the original Civil War draft record. As I looked through this record, I noticed these few but very important details:

• James Burnes
• white
• 24
• Farmer
• Married
• Indiana
• Haw Creek township
• August 5, 1863. 

Here's the record that changed everything. My great, great grandfather, James Burnes is #14.   Photo credit: Ancestry.com . Click the photo to enlarge.

Here's the zoomed in verson of the above picture. Photo Credit: Ancestry.com
So, the story does not end there. On the record, right above his name, was his older brother, William Henry Harrison Burnes (#13), who was drafted at the same time as him. My excitement grew even more. I knew very little about William H.H. Burnes. I had never seen any record about him because he died in his early thirties. I wondered, did he die in the war? Was this the reason why he never married or had any children? This opened the door to further my research and this changed my family history quite a bit.

I am grateful for the knowledge I have of my ancestors. To have the Internet to give us "hints" and to educate us about our heritage, is truly a modern day miracle. To continue this family history is a gift for them and us, and many generations.


Meet my great, great grandfather,

James Jay Burnes:

Born: 21 December 1838 in Washington, Shelby, Indiana.

Married: 17 November 1859 in County Line, Jefferson, Iowa.

Civil War: Drafted on 5 August 1863.

Children: 11

Widowed: Age 40.  Never Remarried.

The following announcement was written by Ancestry.com:

It’s that time again to announce all the greatest new features of Family Tree Maker. We listened to a large range of Family Tree Maker users to improve our features for 2014 including the roll out of the new Family View display, improved TreeSync, more extensive charts and reports, new organizational tools and more. Below is a list of the newly improved features.

What’s new in Family Tree Maker?

• New Family View — see your family tree in a new way. This additional view makes navigating easier, especially when you want to see extended family members.
• Improved TreeSync — lets you easily synchronize your tree in Family Tree Maker with an online Ancestry.com tree. 
• A more robust TreeSync™ lets you sync even more of your family tree info.
• Easily share your tree with your family and work on it together. Family and friends can view the online version of your tree without software or a subscription.
• Collaborate with the largest, most active family history community in the world. Keep your online tree private or make it public so that others researching your family can find you. You may connect with others who have insight on your ancestors, discover rare family photos, or even find relatives you didn’t know you had.
• More organizational tools — stay organized with new tools that let you sort children automatically by birth order and view people by location, grouping them by country, state, county, and city.
• New and improved charts and reports — more options and views let you display an individual’s ancestors, spouses, and children together. Also, the Index of Individuals Report has been expanded with options for anniversary, birthday, and contact lists, and more.
• New tree branch export — a new export option makes it much simpler to export a single branch of your tree.
• More editing options — save time with the ability to copy and paste facts including related source citations, media items, and notes.

1. Access interactive street and satellite maps:  View important locations in your ancestors’ lives. Or create a migration map showing where events in their lives took place.
2. Easily organize media:  Add photos, documents, audio and video in one, easy-to-access location. Link media to multiple people in your tree and incorporate them into charts and reports.
3. Share your work with others:  Use templates to create beautiful family trees or design your own with powerful charting tools. Enhance charts with backgrounds, embellishments and family photos.
4. Discover new family members: Follow hints from Ancestry.com, the world's largest family history resource.
5. Create Smart Stories: Transform facts from your tree into stories that update automatically as you update your tree.
6. Simplify source creation: Use templates to source everything from online databases to vital records.
7. Use standard location names: Use the locations database to enter place names consistently and in a standard format.
8. Explore data like never before:  Use new and improved reports to gather information and export it in a variety of formats. Save settings in one report and apply them to others.
9. Navigate your tree with ease: View multiple generations, navigate to any individual in your tree with a click of the mouse and add or edit life events.
10. Import data from other genealogy programs:  Open files created in Legacy™ Family Tree, The Master Genealogist™ and FamilySearch™ Personal Ancestral Files.

About this photo:
This is a photograph of my grandmother meeting her great grandchild for the first time.
As I held my 2 month old baby for grandma to see, their eyes met, and both of them smiled and laughed, as if they were long time friends meeting again. My husband just happened to capture this at the moment it happened. It was a very touching moment, and one that I will never forget. She passed away, shortly after this photo was taken, and I am so grateful that I made the time to see her and to write her family history every time I visited her. Each time I called her on the phone, I asked her questions about her life growing up, and before I knew it, I had captured and documented her family history. I am so grateful I did this and you will be too.

Keep connecting the dots!!
-Sarah

Genealogy Trivia:
If you figure there’s 25 years between each generation, 500 years ago there were 1,048,576 people involved in creating YOU! YOU are special!

Keep connecting the dots. -Sarah

Who has a grandma like this one? Johanna Quaas, the 87 year old, 11-times German Senior champion of artistic gymnastics, from Halle, Germany became popular in 2012 when many YouTube clips showed her training at age 86 during the Turnier der Meister in Cottbus. The clips became a huge hit and generated  millions of views on YouTube. Johanna Quass was entered into The Guinness Book of Records on September 13, 2012 as oldest gymnast in the world. Check out the her videos below, and be prepared to be amazed!!

VIDEO of gymnastics competition on March 26, 2012


VIDEO from The day Quaas was entered into The Guinness Book of Records; September 13, 2012


VIDEO of Johanna Quaas telling her story and her "Secrets to Success."


Johanna Quaas was born November 20, 1925 in Hohenmölsen, Germany. She married  gymnast coach Gerhard Quaas in 1963 with whom she had three daughters.

This is absolutely true! -Sarah