The Emily Experience

Monday, December 16, 2013

Family picture

Taken in the spring of 2013. Emily age 5 and Courtney age 1

Questions and goals

Answer the Following Questions—Type your answers below the questions:

1. Write your favorite quote from the provided list.

"Don’t be afraid to take a big step. You can’t cross a chasm is two small jumps.”

2. Write your feelings about family history work.

I think that it is very important. I feel that there is so much to do and we all need to work together to get it done. I really want to work on my husbands line to get that family history work done.

3. Define in writing a character trait that you desire to work on in order to realize more success in your future family history efforts.

I desire to not be such a procrastinator.

4. Write specific goals you feel to set for yourself concerning your future work in family history and temple service. Consider breaking the goals into short, medium, and long-term.

I would like to be able to find info from 3 of my husbands lines that came from Hungary and Germany

5. Identify challenges that may derail your goals.

I have not had any success in finding anything over in Europe. I do not speak the languages so I can not read the documents if I did find them.

6. Make plans that will enable you to realize your goals. Don’t just identify what you want to do, also state how you will do it.

I want to learn to speak Hungarian so that if I ever get to go there to do family history, I can speak the language. There is a free site through my local library called Mango that has Hungarian available.

My Dreams	Goals
---Goal 1--- Keep my house clean for 1 month	Daily: load/empty dishwasher vacuum downstairs --- Weekly: vacuum upstairs clean bathrooms mop dust Deadline: 1-31-2014
---Goal 2--- find 5 names to take to the temple	Daily: pray focus on one line --- Weekly: --- --- --- --- --- Deadlines: 2-29-14
---Goal 3--- use less electronics	Daily: check email/facebook no more than 2x on laptop check email/facebook no more than 2x on phone do chores before electronics limit night time watching of tv/computer time to 3 hours Weekly: don't watch tv without a purpose/no channel surfing don't play computer games on sunday go to library to check out books Deadline: Dec. 31, 2014

Sunday, December 1, 2013

My Parents mini life Story

My Mom

Carla was born in Montpelier on July 27 to Florence and Wesley. She is the oldest of 8 children. She was raised in Dingle on a 4 acre farm. They lived in the basement of her Grandparents house till she was about 11 and then they switched places and they lived upstairs and her Dads parents lived in the basement. She got along really well with her siblings and preferred to play with them over the neighbor kids because they were more fun. She got to help with some of the fun chores like feeding the cows. Her dad would start the truck and put it in gear and then have her “drive” it while he was in the back throwing out the hay to the cows. She thought that was just so much fun. Her dad died from pancreatic cancer the summer after she graduated high school. She was 18 and her youngest brother was just 4 years old.

She went to Ricks College in Rexburg for 2 years and that is where she met my dad. He was there visiting some friends from his hometown of Mountain Home. He ended up going into the army and came back on leave to marry her in early 1972, then took her back with him to Panama where he was stationed.

They eventually moved to Caldwell Idaho after he got out of the Army and he got a job as a phone repair man. They then moved to Mountain Home Idaho where their first daughter was born. They then moved to Ray Colorado where their second child, a son, was born. They moved back to Mountain Home and had 2 more daughters. When the youngest was 3, they moved to Dingle Idaho. They lived there for 13 years before they moved back to Mountain Home to help take care or Russ’s dad. That was in 1996. They still live in Mountain Home today.

My Dad

Russell was born in 1950 in Salt Lake City. He was born 2 months premature and had some complications from that. He does not have a belly button because they used his umbilical cord to give him medicine and sewed it up when they were done so now there is just a smooth indent where the belly button should be.

His dad worked in Boy Scouts and he has memories of going to Scout Camp when he was just 5 years old. He was the camp bum. He could go around to all the different camps to see who had the best food and would bum off of them. They would take him fishing and he remembers pictures of him with some pretty big fish.

He went to college at Boise State University but all of his friends went to Ricks College. He went to visit them one weekend and that is how he first met my mom. At the time she was dating his friend. After the friend went on a mission, he told him to look her up, and he did. College was not going well and it was during the Vietnam War and he was going to be drafted, so he decided to just volunteer and get it over with. So he went into the Army and stayed in touch with Carla through letters. He never properly proposed to her, he just told her that he needed to start saving money for a ring and hoped that she would agree. They had not really spent that much time together. They were probably only together a handful of times before they were married. Two of those times, he was just there as her boyfriends friend.

Monday, November 11, 2013

Life Story of Stephanie Baxter Benkovich

I was born in Mountain Home. I was born the youngest of 4 children to Russ and Carla Baxter. My oldest sister is Danielle, followed by my brother Todd and then my other sister Jennifer, then me. We lived in Mountain Home till I was around 3 years old, then we moved to Dingle. My Mom’s mom, Florence , lived there. I think we lived with her for a little while when we first got there, but then we moved into the little yellow house on the corner of the road up to the cemetery. We lived there till I was about 5 or so. I remember that we moved before I started school because I never go to get on the bus there and I was very upset about that. I remember that while we were at that house, I decided one day that I wanted a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but I couldn’t find the raspberry jelly, all I could find that was red was ketchup so I used that. I ate the whole sandwich while my siblings gagged. A few years later I decided to try it again just to see why I ate it, it didn’t taste as good the second time around.

When we moved there, my Dad decided to build a house. So we all helped. There is a picture of me when I was 3 or 4 hammering on the garage. We moved into the house before it was done. If I recall, there were no windows and no glass sliding door on yet. We got most of it done while we lived there, but something’s were not done till we moved back to Mountain Home 11 years or so later.

We lived behind my Grandma Ream. There was some big pastures in between our houses. There was a big old barn, lots of trees that we built a tree house in, some old grain silos, and a little wooden shed we all called the Skunk house, a little swampy stream with a big fallen tree that we called “the ship”, an old one room cabin, a chicken coop and a big sandstone rock about 6-8 feet in diameter that we called Snake Rock. My siblings and I spent a lot of our time outside playing when we were young. Since we lived next to Grandma, we also got to play with my many cousins whenever they came to visit. My mom was one of 8 kids, so I had a lot of cousins. The one I played with most was Lane, he was the oldest of Foster and Sharla kids. We were only a year apart and we played all the time, sometimes Jennifer would play with us too, but mostly it was just Lane and I. There was a big pile of bricks by the Skunk house that we used to play with a lot. We would stack them and restack them to make whatever we wanted.

The bus driver lived almost next door to us, but we lived down a long driveway. The bus would have to go past us and then turn around and head back into Montpelier were we went to school. When we would see the bus drive by the first time, someone would yell “Bus going South!” and if we left the house right then and ran all the way up the driveway, we would usually just make it there by the time the bus came back around. I can only remember missing the bus one time and I think I chased it down and got on the stop or two after mine.

There was a great big field between our house and the main road. Every so often, we would drive our little red pickup truck in there. Then we would get out my Dad’s old army parachute he took from the army. I think they were just going to throw it way. The strings were cut so there was no harness or anything. We would tie the strings to the back of the pickup truck. At the very top were some vent holes and so the game was to grab onto those and let the parachute lift you up. Of course we were all chicken and as soon as it got more than a foot of the ground, we let go. I remember one time, one of the Lloyd twins was over playing with us, and one of them held on and went at least 20 feet in the air. We were so worried that he would let go and fall, but the parachute came back down and he was fine. It was very scary though. I remember one time after we moved back to Mountain Home that we took that parachute out to the Bruno sand dunes and had fun having it drag us up the dunes.

At some point my Grandma went on a mission to New Mexico, I think. While she was gone and with her permission, my dad took on the project of remodeling her house. He completely gutted the inside. There was only newspaper in the outside walls as insulation. No wonder her house was always freezing. There were bats that were living in the attic. The upstairs walls were filled with bat poop. At least 4 – 5 feet deep. I remember that one time as we were knocking down the walls and a bat flew out. My dad got the shop vacuum and sucked it up. Then to kill it, he took it down to the truck and started it and but the vacuum up to the exhaust.

When my Grandma got back from her mission, she got the choice at which house she wanted. The one she had been living in, or the house that my Dad built. She chose the one my dad built because she was getting older and the other house had 10 steps you had to climb just to get into the first floor. So that means that we got to move into her old house. I remember being so excited because I would get to paint my own room, unfortunately for me, my only paint choices were white or off white.

My best friend growing up was Monica. She lived down the road at the end of the pavement on the way to Bear Lake. We used to play together all the time. When we got into middle school and high school, we weren’t really friends anymore.

After my sophomore year at high school, my parents and I (Jennifer had just graduated and joined the Marines and Todd and Danielle were on their missions I think) moved back to Mountain Home so that we could be near my Dad’s dad. He had lost his wife and was in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s. I was so excited to move, by that time I hated Bear Lake. I didn’t have any friends and was stuck in a rut. I was so glad when we moved, I thought that I would finally get to be the new kid that everyone wanted to be friends with. Unfortunately for me, we moved to a town with an Air Force base, so there were kids coming and going all the time. I was not special, but I loved it there and made some great friends that I still keep in contact with today. Most of them are my friends from Drama. I loved drama in High School! Our teacher was terrible, but we all had a blast together.

After I graduated high school in 1998, I went to college at Idaho State University in Pocatello Idaho. I was too lazy to apply for any scholarships or financial aid, so I had to pay my own way. I didn’t have enough money to start the fall semester, so I worked and started in the winter semester. I enjoyed that time off of school so much that the summer after college, I decided not to go back to school. A decision that I now regret. I wish that I had at least got my associates before I dropped out of school.

That first summer after college I spent in Jackson Hole Wyoming working at a restaurant as a breakfast cook. My friend Monica was working there as a waitress and that is what I thought I would be doing too. I hated being a cook, I had no idea what I was doing. After a month or 2 I was demoted to kitchen help. Soon after that I quit to be a Certified Nursing Assistant at the local nursing home. I stayed in Jackson Hole till around November or December of 1999. I went to Disney World with my friends Ann and Tonya from High School the week of Thanksgiving and also my 20^th birthday.

Then I moved to Boise Idaho and became roommates with Ann. I tried to go to Boise State, but halfway through the semester, I got sick for a week and when I came back to class, it was midterms. I did terrible on several subjects so I just decided to drop out. I worked at St. Luke’s hospital as a CNA. I started out on the oncology (cancer) floor, but then after about a year, I transferred to Labor and Delivery. I LOVED working there, even though I worked nights (7p-7a) it was great!

In August 2001 I decided to be a live in nanny. I had a very strong desire to go to New York.

to be continued...

Monday, September 16, 2013

School

I am taking an online class from BYU-I in Family History. As part of the class I will be using my blog to post some family history information.
I am so thankful that I found the Pathway program through BYU-I. It is truly an inspired program. I am able to go back to school after more than 13 years. This is my first semester with "real" classes after graduating from Pathways. I am nervous but excited to take some classes. I have chosen to take Intro to Family History because I want to find out more about my husbands family and do some temple work for them. I know that this work is so important. I am so excited to find his ancestors and try to find some stories about them so that I can share them with my children.
I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I love the temple and love the work that I can do for my ancestors here on earth, so that they can have a choice in the hereafter. The greatest gift that God has given to us is free agency, the gift to choose for ourselves. By doing Family History, I am, in a small way, giving that agency to my ancestors. I am giving them the choice to accept the ordinances that I do for them, or to reject them. Either way, I will have done my part.
I am greatfull for the

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Flooding

In March we had some major flooding in New Milford, more then I have ever seen. These are pictures of the river, you can;t tell from these pictures, but in between the all the little posts and the trees, is a road.