The so called PROBLEM

As I've tried to focus my efforts when it comes to Family History work, I often find myself in a struggle. There are so many different aspects of family history to work on and I find all of them so intriguing.  After attending a couple different genealogy conferences this year I was motivated to learn a lot about the latest and greatest technologies, which let's face it, could be a full time job on it's own, there's so many amazing resources out there, and I find myself spending tons of time just trying them all out.  Then you've got just the

good old fashioned genealogy research, I get so wrapped up in finding new people, researching their stories and details of their lives, and attaching sourcing to their profiles on FamilySearch.  Then there's temple work

to do, I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS), so obviously this aspect of family history is very important to me (Why Family History is Important), and finding the relatives of my relatives can be super exciting, so that I can invite them to also partake in the blessings found within the gospel of Jesus Christ.  But then with all of the new amazing things coming on to FamilySearch with Photos I find myself drawn to digitizing and uploading everything I can get my hands on from my various lines. And of of course I still have a lot of grandparents who are still alive (which I realize is unique for a genealogist), so I recognize the need to get their stories recorded and interview them. Not to mention the responsibility I have as the mom of my own family, to preserve our history, which I've tried to do via a family blog, yearbooks and year-videos.  Aye aye aye, so much to do so where do I start?  Oh yeah, then there's this little thing called life...so I don't actually have that much spare time to devote to said addiction. :)

So, every time that my husband and I find ourselves discussing this "problem" I have, we always ultimately come back to focusing on the preservation of the histories of those who are still alive.  And we've tried to schedule the interviews we'd like to do, then allow the other things to fall in around it.

Now I confess, I don't have the BEST methods for preserving family stories out there, and definitely not the best equipment, but I guess I feel that if I can at least do it, I'm going in the right direction.  That said, I've been working on getting my husband's grandparents life interviews on video interview, Vern and Sue Thacker.  They are absolutely adorable, I have loved getting to know them as we've done this, and we are only one good session away with each of them from having their life stories recorded.  Not sure what I'm going to do with them exactly when we're done, but we're one step closer.  

Meanwhile, they had a 60th anniversary creeping up on us and I had this fantastic idea. So with the help and support of both my mother in-law and my incredibly supportive husband. I was able to squeeze some additional interview time in, and put this together from our interview recordings.

It's not perfect or professional, but I don't think it needs to be, it's preserved. And I did it for very little cost.  I used my computer and an external webcam to do the filming. I used my husband's phone, for a back up recording of audio, which I was very happy to have, it made the audio much more clear.  Then I used Premier Elements to edit and clip the audio, video, and pictures together.  I love Premier, I've been using it for several years, but you could really clip something similar together just using whatever free video editing program comes with your computer, the two common ones are Windows Movie Maker, and iMovie.  A great site to use if you're a beginner and need some help learning the basic how to's using these different programs is, www.Lynda.com.