John Perkins genealogy

One of my hopes in moving to England was to find John Perkins and his ancestors. He is my 3th great Grandfather: it goes me, my Mom, my Grandpa Edward Quinn Jensen, my great Grandma Madora Laverna Rogerson Jensen, my great great Grandma Sara Jane Perkins Rogerson, then my great great great Grandpa John Perkins. He is the only one of my English ancestors where we don't have any information on his parents.Tuesday for mutual we went to a family history fireside about the new FamilySearch. Brother Dunn from the Church History dept gave the presentation and said that genealogy is the 2nd/3rd hobbies in the UK and US. That's probably why "Who do you think you are?" is such a popular tv show. Well, Br Dunn showed us his blog post on FamilySearch about 9 new features of the new search engine, which gave me ideas on how to find John Perkins. And sure enough I think I found him. I think this is him in England's 1841 Census, his marriage record to his first wife in Australia, and in the 1860 United States Census. So instead of being from Bath like what the old Ancestral File says apparently he is from Shepton Mallet, a small town south of Bath, which is only 2 hours away from me. Looks like this will be our first married road trip!

The lady sitting with Uncle Neal and Clyde is Sarah Jane Perkins Rogerson (John's oldest daughter) and her husband John Edward Rogerson (he crossed the plains with the Martin Handcart Company) in Monticello, Utah, the picture has to be before 1928 when John Edward died.

p.s. Today my Grandma Jensen's last sibling died. Uncle Roy had Parkinson's Disease, played the saxophone, wrote poetry, and he was fun just like my Grandma!

a simple test

Have you ever taken a pregnancy test and wanted it to be positive, but you already knew it would be negative? I did that yesterday. The regular signs that my period was coming had already appeared for a week, but since the period didn't show up I wanted to take a pregnancy test. It was negative like I thought, but there is that tiny hope in me that really wanted it to be positive. At least now I have the experience of taking a pregnancy test so next time when I think that it might be positive... we can celebrate!

socially acceptable

If you were going to someone's house for the first time, would you bring a dog into their home? If you knew the wife was allergic to cats but not sure about dogs, would you bring a dog with you to visit a newlywed couple?

We had a visitor on Saturday that brought a dog with them. I didn't notice until tonight that the dog left paw bits all over the carpet (it rained all weekend). I was annoyed that this visitor brought a dog in the flat without asking, but I held my tongue to be polite (yeah I know you are shocked that I did that).

Mother's Day

Grandma Jensen and my Mom when she was about 2/3/4 years old.

It's Mother's day on Sunday. People are putting pictures of their Mother's and Grandmother's up on facebook, so I thought I would do it too. Relatives started commenting on the pictures about how awesome and fun my Grandma was. I remember when she died, I was only 5, people would call all the time and tell my Mom how sorry they were that she was gone. As a 5 year old I thought it was Grandma calling from heaven to give my Mom instructions on how to do something around the house.

It's contagious!

Jenny, the YW's Prez, was married and sealed to her husband about 18 years ago. Dave and I have been married for two weeks now. And yesterday Michele, the 2nd C in the YW's, was sealed to her husband (they were married last year and have a fun blended family) in the Preston Temple and I got to go. It's pretty awesome for all the YW leaders to all be an example to the YW by being married in the Temple!

Dave says it's like having super powers now. We do a fist pump where our rings touch, then he recites the Green Lantern oath. I keep telling him he needs to come up with his own oath and stop copying the GL's.

Plus the Royal Wedding was Friday if you didn't notice ;)

Movies

When I went to South Africa I realized not everyone did movie ratings the same as the United States. Since I have now lived in England for a year and still have two more years I figure there might be some middle ground. I found it in the form of the USCCB ratings system, aka United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Plus, in my opinion, the US ratings system is getting slack about letting things into PG-13 movies (I don't watch R movies), so I have liked how the USCCB rates the content on moral issues.