Seventh Post-It Note Day

Zak and I met after my friend and I left a post-it note on his car as a joke. We didn't leave our numbers, just our first names. We met the following week in passing. One year later, we married. We still celebrate the event that started it all with our very own "Post-It" Note Day.

Collecting Pumpkins

Every year we like to get pumpkins for Halloween. Sometimes we paint; sometimes we carve. This year we bought a few from the store. I've taken an art class from a wonderful woman about to leave on an LDS mission to Lithuania. She and her husband grew pumpkins in their garden, so she offered them, free for the taking. I took a couple more. Last week my parents invited us for a tractor ride at Mt. Naomi Farms. At the end of the ride, we each got to pick a pumpkin. We convinced Miss V she didn't actually need to pick a gigantic one.

Bundled up for our trailer-pulled-by-tractor ride at Mt Naomi Farms

Our unicorn pumpkin collapsed almost immediately, but Niki's Sharpie pumpkin and Zak's jagged face jack-o-lantern lasted quite a while.

Mendon City Cemetery

While doing some family history, I noticed an announcement about this weekend's Event sponsored by Ancestry.com and FindaGrave.com to visit a cemetery, photograph headstones, make connections, and share stories. Zak and I decided it would make an ideal family home evening activity, so we packed up our camera and winter layers. I chose the Mendon City Cemetery after searching local cemeteries on findagrave.com and noticing that it was only 81% photographed. With about 1,200 headstones, I figured we would reasonably find some of the un-photographed headstones in the time our children could handle being there. The information was a lot easier than I expected to access.

South-east-facing view from the Mendon-City Cemetery, taken by Zak Porter

Mysister-in-law, Niki, who is staying with us for a bit, also joined us. None of us had ever been to Mendon, let alone seen the glorious landscapes of a cloudy day from that spot. Mr C slept the entire time, and Miss V had a blast playing on the grass and looking at different headstones. I'd printed out a list with names and dates of those yet to be photographed, so Zak was in charge of the paperwork and I read the names off the headstones and photographed. Niki was given the special duty of searching for the four headstones people had specifically requested by photographed.

Zak and Niki, taken by Niki Porter

We made it about halfway through the wide section, so about a quarter of more through the whole cemetery. Fortunately, others have done the majority of the headstones, there were just a few they hadn't gotten at the time, and some of the deceased who had passed away since the cemetery was last photographed. We lasted until droplets started to fall, and Miss V was ready for a change.

Besides doing something useful for the cause, one of my favorite moments happened when Miss V played in the car, and accidentally leaned on the horn. She screamed for about three seconds, but fortunately, sleeping Mr C continued to slumber in his carseat.

Niki and Nicole (me), taken by Niki Porter

The next day, I uploaded the images, enhanced a couple so they could be easily read, and linked them to their appropriate people on findagrave.com. After uploading primary images of headstones for 19 people, and additional photos for those who had passed away before their recently-deceased spouses, we increased the number of headstones in Mendon photographed by 1.5%, and one of the four requested photographs.

Adventures at the Mendon City Cemetery, taken by Niki Porter

I happily participated in a very small way in this global effort. This has been a very useful tool for me in finding out if people whom I find connected to family members on familysearch.org and ancestry.com are deceased, and also a good idea of spouses, parents, siblings, or children. I appreciate access to this wonderfully helpful information, and am glad for this family activity and experience.