A Photo Or Two

And so now, here we are in the 21st Century. All of my ancestors, save my grandparents, aunts, and uncles, are in Heaven watching me. I sure hope they are proud of where I have gone in my life so far. I've just finished my second year of college, and I've been married almost seven months. For kicks and giggles, I just want to share some of my sweetest memories, and some of the people I love the most!

 This is one of the engagement pictures of my sweetheart and I. Ladies and gentleman, meet Brady Lee Grover, the best man I've ever met. 

 Here is Brady's sweet mother, Cindy Sommer. She is a great Mother-In-Law!

 This is Brady's father, Matt, and his step-mother, Diana. His father is also one of the best men I know. He is wonderful!

 Here is Brady's sweet sister, Chambrae. Her and I are like pb&j! She has the cutest kids!

 These are my girls. Chambrae is there along with my cousin, Rachelle, to the left. The rest are my sisters, Natalie, Amanda, and Rachel. 

 This is my lovely, silly, incredible family all together! Rachel, Jacob, Natalie, my father, my mother, Amanda, and her husband Mats. 

 This is, of course, my beautiful mother.

 My two favorite men in the whole wide world. Brady and my father. 

 My cute, cute grandparents are to the left, and Brady's step-grandparents are to the right. I love my grandparents, they are the best and are so much fun!

 The best day of my life is when I married Brady in the Idaho Falls Temple. I went from being Olivia Marie Rogers, to Olivia Marie Grover. (O.M.G...cool right?)

My entire family! Brady has another brother, Bryan, who is in the top right corner. He has a wife and a sweet baby boy now! Brady also has another brother, Blake, who is right above Brady's mom in the right center. Blake is married to Paula, and they have three adorable kids that I babysit frequently. 

And so, that's my family. Brady and I also have a very new addition. His name is Huckleberry Finn. He's a miniature pinscher/greyhound mix. We love that little dog to death. We call him Huck for short. I certainly have the greatest family, and such a good life!

- Olivia Grover

- thank God, love life, love family, love me :)

A Pedigree Chart

As I've gone throughout my Family History Class, I've had to create a pedigree fan chart. This was surprisingly neat for me. For some reason, seeing my ancestry in that form, laid out in that way, was very powerful and moving to me. It's incredible the power that families have on this earth. I suddenly realized the strength of my living and deceased ancestors. I think that together, families have the power to overcome everything that Satan could throw at us. And though I may not personally know over half of those names on my pedigree chart, there is a bond that connects us all. 

I apologize for the extremely large size of the photo, but I wanted my name and my ancestor's names to be clear! I come from a great heritage. Some of my ancestors are a few of the greatest people I have ever read about. They were brave, kind, generous, optimistic, enduring, patient, and faithful. I hope I can live up to my potential as a descendant. 

- Olivia Grover

- love family

A Personal Records Project

Throughout the past few weeks I have been gathering information and pictures that I have put in a binder for my family. My goal is to have all of my important information in one place. For example, my sweetheart and I have pictures, marriage/birth certificates, important security documents, and information in there so that if something ever happened we would have everything in one place. The other goal I had with this binder was to include a personal history of my husband and I and our family. It's still a work in progress for sure, but I included journals I'm transcribing and pictures of extended family. I've also included accomplishments or awards that we've gotten. This way I have the best of both worlds in one nice binder. 

I want to continue this for as long as I can. As I was preparing this, I got excited about one day having the opportunity to add important documents and pictures of my children to this binder. I am going to continue to add to it and make it nicer, safer, and more accurate as time goes by. How convenient would it be for my descendants to have all of our information in one, nice binder? 

The document I created to show pictures of what I've included in the binder is too big to copy and paste, so I provided a link to a Google Drive document that you can download, if you wish. I hope it works for your computer. If not, I apologize. I tried to find some way to shorten it or something, but I decided that I put too much work into it, and I wanted to show it to others in its complete and full form. 

- Olivia Grover

    - love life

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3EVpweLlVBFMDNEbFhKa2htcFU/edit?usp=sharing

A Lifetime Commitment

I made a list of some goals, some lifetime commitments I want to acheive. Many of them are family history oriented, as they should be, others are just goals I've developed in my mind for my current time frame. These goals shift many, many times. But they're goals, and writing them down always makes them more achievable! I also try to break them down into steps, or things I can check off. I'm a list person for sure!

Short Term: Go to the temple at least once a week and participate in more than just endowments
Medium: Begin a habit of doing indexing or simple family history work on Sundays instead of napping or watching a movie.
Long-term: Discover the broken links to my grandfather’s Cherokee heritage and perform ordinances for them in the temple

Some challenges to my short-term goal are simply being busy and letting school and work overwhelm my sweetheart and I, to where we don’t go. Challenges to my medium goal could include the desire not being present, motivation being gone, and justification in not actually doing it. Challenges to my long-term goal could include disappointment if I don’t find anything immediately, loss of motivation, lack of appropriate energy expenditure, and lack of willingness to go the hard extra miles.

For my short-term goal I plan on setting a specific day and time to go every week and then write it on our calendar. I also plan on telling our family and friends so they know not to contact us and to encourage us to remember. I also plan on making sure that day we both have everything done on time in order to enable us to go. For my medium-term goal I plan on setting aside a certain amount of time every Sunday. I also want my sweetheart and I to be held accountable to each other. I also think putting notes around the house or putting it on the calendar would help. Maybe a note on the T.V. so when we go to watch a movie we are reminded to do something else. Finally, for my long-term goal, I want to put a picture/description of my goal where I can see it on a regular basis. I want to find a way to build my motivation. Also, over the years I want to work on my self-control so I can go the extra mile because I make myself actually do it. I plan on breaking this large goal up into little goals over the years, like contacting relatives, doing internet research, going to family history centers, one step at a time.

My Dreams	Goals
---Goal 1--- Build 400+ volunteer hours	Daily: --- Plan out my day --- Work on self-control and time management --- Go to bed early/rise early Weekly: --- Contact various agencies for permission to volunteer for them --- Volunteer for at least two hours once or twice a week --- Record hours and evaluate experience Deadline: --- Accomplish 400+ hours before my internship so I can have a jumpstart on my internship hours as well.
---Goal 2--- Continue to receive Academic Full-Tuition Scholarship	Daily: --- Do homework the day it is assigned --- Write daily assignments in planner --- Turn in homework early --- Do more than required on each assignment --- Go to bed/rise early Weekly: --- Check with professors on ways to improve --- Follow grades & GPA --- Plan ahead for future classes --- Manage time/extracurricular activities Deadlines: --- Be granted the Academic Full-Tuition Scholarship by next winter semester by keeping GPA above 3.7
---Goal 3--- Find the broken linkage to my Grandfather’s Cherokee lineage	Daily: --- Keep FamilySearch as my homepage; use free time looking up ancestors, not Facebooking --- Check my Google alerts for new ancestral records online Weekly: --- Keep in contact with living relatives to see what they find --- Spend 1 hour every Sunday doing family research --- Record all findings in research log and pedigree --- Go to Family History Center to learn about Native American researching --- Perform in-depth Internet research Deadline: --- No specific day, but in the future (at least 10 or 15 years) I would like to have some sort of lead or breakthrough on finding names in that lineage. There is no information currently and I want to have some! And then eventually, I want to go back as far as I can and perform all of the ordinances.

 - Olivia

love yourself :)