Give a Mouse a Cookie

I'm sure most of you are familiar with this book. I seem to be living its storyline at the moment---in many facets of my life. Most recently, I received a post from a cousin indicating that we have a huge tangled mess on our family tree, compliments of the new family search program.

A confession: I love family history. I enjoy hearing the family stories, collecting pictures of ancestors, and putting together scrapbooks with this information for my kids. To me, delving into family history is like the greatest mystery of all time. And just when you think you've figured out the plot, a whole new set of clues emerge that indicate everything you once thought true, is not.

Case in point; I've been really excited to try out the new family search program. When it became available to our stake a few weeks ago, I eagerly took a look-see. I even watched most of the beginning tutorial, so I would be prepared to dabble. Then behold, as I worked my way through the handy pedigree thingy that is part of this exciting new program, I ran into a major glitch. It showed that my grandmother's temple work had never been done. Knowing this to be false, I made the mistake of showing my mother what I had discovered. She was personally insulted by this error.

So . . . I gave the mouse a cookie. I contacted the nice Family Search people and shared all of the ordinance dates in our possession with regard to my grandmother. (At the moment, we can't change anything ourselves on this new program.) A week went by and I received word that all was well, and the temple work had been added to my grandmother's history. I was relieved until I realized that these same nice and helpful Family Search people had helped themselves to the family milk.

Behold, as my youngest son is fond of saying, I received word earlier this morning from a cousin who is distraught that my grandmother is now linked to her grandparents in a most unbecoming fashion. Skipping my grandmother's parents, my grandmother is now linked to her grandparents instead as one of their children. How does this kind of thing happen?

In my defense, this has been an extremely crazy week and I haven't had five minutes to get onto the new Family Search site to check things out. I trusted the nice and helpful staff of the new Family Search program to get things right. Sigh . . . now I'm listed as the one who linked my grandmother to the wrong set of parents. I'm anticipating several more e-mails regarding this matter to surface in the near future, from other outraged cousins.

All I tried to do was to give a mouse a simple cookie. In trying to change one simple mistake, there now appears to be a domino effect taking place on our family line. And the really crazy part, I won't have time to address this issue properly until next week. Today I'm singing at yet another funeral, my in-laws are arriving for a family reunion that is taking place this weekend, & some of my youngest son's Canadian friends are arriving for a visit. I don't think I'm bored. ;)

Note to self: this is when I run screaming the other direction. And avoid handing out "cookies" to the nice and helpful Family Search people who have made my life ever so lovely at the moment. If you don't see anything new posted on Crane-ium for a while, it's because I've gone into hiding until I get this mess all straightened out.

Au Revoir.