RootsTech 2015

Eric received an email a few months ago announcing RootsTech 2015, the family history conference in Salt Lake City "where people of all ages are inspired to discover and share their memories and connection."  There were going to be talks by a couple of apostles and other church leaders and other cool people.  As an added bonus, Studio C and David Archuleta would be performing there.  We talked about how cool it would be for Eric to take the girls (since it wouldn't be a very effective trip with Amelia and Bradley).  We weren't sure if it would work out, so we didn't tell them about it.
Well, Friday the 13th came and after an awesome advanced choir performance that Abbey was in, Amber took the boys home and Eric waited with Eliza for Abbey to come out.  Eric told the girls to go to the bathroom before they got in the car which started the questioning and their figuring that something was up.  Eric held out as long as he could, and told them, before they were even out of the parking lot, that they were going to RootsTech and all of the cool things that were there.  They were excited, to say the least.

Valentine's Day Sunrise

Most of the trip, however, was a bunch of driving.  We left Fallon and arrived in Elko at midnight.  After a snafu with reservations, we finally got to bed at 12:30.  We had a short nap and were back up at 5:30 to drive the rest of the way to SLC. 
We made it to the convention center and were walking down the hall, when we ran into a woman and her daughter from our ward.  Just after registering, we were walking toward our first class and heard someone else calling out to us; it was Amber's cousin Beth.  It's crazy how small the world is.
The first class was a discussion given by Elders L. Whitney Clayton, Allen F. Packer, and Kent F. Richards and Sister Marriott about performing family history work and common issues that come up.  One of the things that we were most excited about was when Elder Richards announced that all temples will begin "Family Priority Time" where families will be able to go in together and perform Baptisms and Confirmations.  We try to take Abbey every month and usually jump in with whatever group happens to be at that time, but the family priority time sounds like a great way to encourage more families to come and participate together.

Temple Selfie

After our first class we ran to get some lunch and then fast walked through temple square before running to get to the next speakers.  We were a little late to that one, but heard some great messages from Al Fox Carraway (The Tattooed Mormon blogger) and Noelle Pikus-Pace (The 2014 Silver Medalist in the skeleton), then Elder Andersen spoke, giving us a new challenge for family history.  A lot of the messages were based on the theme of Find, Take, Teach.  The challenge he gave was to "Prepare as many names for the temple as baptisms you perform in the temple and help someone else to do the same."  In other words: Find ancestors, Take their names to the temple, and Teach others how to do it.  There was an opportunity to get autographs from Studio C and David Arhculeta, but there were a ton of people and they shut down before we made it.  We then heard from Elder Cook and his family.  And last of all was the performance by Studio C and David Archuleta. 
We drove back to Elko for the night and then the rest of the way home Sunday morning to complete the whirlwind trip.  It was so much fun and we're hoping we'll be able to do it again another year.
Go to https://rootstech.org/video/4050134760001 for the videos (there were only a few as of this post, but they should have more up later).