Family Discovery Day

For the 2nd year in a row Britton, Jenna, Korinne and I hit the Family Discovery Day at Roots Tech. This time we brought Grandma along with us and it didn't disappoint.  As we were leaving at the end of the day Korinne asked, "Can we come back next year?" Yes we can, Korinne.  It's amazing how easy it is to put into your schedule when its FREE.

Last year the kids got to meet the cast of Studio C and see David Archuleta in concert, but even without such celebrities this year we had a fabulous time.  We got to hear from Elder Renlund and his family, Shari Dew and Wendy W Nelson, Sister Wixom and Brother Owen and Britton especially loved the session with Britain Covey of the U of U football team and Taysom Hill from the BYU football team.  It was not only interesting and uplifting but entertaining, too.

It would be worth going just to hear the general sessions and classes, but that's not all you get to do at Family Discovery Day, you also get to go through the Roots Tech Expo Hall or as my kids like to call it, "family history themed Trick or Treating".  Of the hundreds of booths at the expo hall about 80% of them have some kind of candy or prize for you to take as you walk by.

A view into the large expo hall from the 2nd floor balcony. 

It's not the just candy that made it fun for the kids, they also got to learn and see all sorts of new things.  Familysearch had a big family discovery center set up for the kids to learn all sorts of information about themselves.

Korinne's name was the least common name in our group.  Only 442 have her name (with this spelling) in the United States.

There were also fun photo booths.

Korinne was happier than she looks in this picture, I promise.

I love Roots Tech.  Just walking into the building I thought to myself, "Ah, this is my happy place." It's a place where I'm surrounded by people who think this stuff is as interesting as I do.  The kids are now motivated and excited to keep learning more about their family history and even have a few new skills.

The night before Roots Tech we went to the new Church History Library that opened back up in the fall after being closed for a year. 

We liked the new exhibit and really liked the new 10 min video of the first vision. They have a screen that wraps around you so you feel like you are really in the Sacred Grove, too.

Jameson in the children's area of the museum.

Jenna and Dad hanging with Jmo in the interactive part of the museum.

In the area of the museum that has a display and artifacts from each of the modern day prophets there was a lady there with a typewriter and quill pens for the kids to see what it was like to write "back in the day".

Jenna and Korinne were enamored with the typewriter.  It was the first time either of them had seen or used one and they thought it was really cool. 

I felt especially old when I told them how I learned to type on a typewriter in my 9th grade type class. The museum volunteer hit the nail on the head when she said, "Typewriters are great if you never make a mistake and have all day."  Jenna asked if we could get one to play with at home.  Wow. That would be a very large and bulky "toy".

Writing with an ink pen, harder than it looks.

It was a nice way to spend the weekend.  Korinne had parent teacher conferences this week and got Friday off from school, Britton went to an interactive STEM Fair in SLC with 4 buses of kids from his school. Adam also went along as parent volunteer to do some recon work for Fesora.  He decided that school buses are made for kids and aren't very good at accommodating men who are 6 ft tall. :-)  Jenna found out that she missed winning the school "Beat the Teach" reading competition by only 11 pages which is nothing when you consider she read over 15,000 pages during the 6 week competition.  In the end she still got a fantastic prize, a family pass to the Aquatic Center.  Britton won it last year so I was very happy to have her win it this time.  It's worth $275.00! Good job Jenna!