Memories

We brought the girls back up to Edmonton last weekend.  I miss having them keep me active.  Since coming up here I've been holed up making scrapbook layouts of our fun week together.

The day we left Lethbridge, I found thank-you letters from Charlie and Kenzie - totally spontaneous and unsolicited.  Someone's doing something right with my girls.

Papa got included in the thank yous because he was there for the last two days.  They're equal opportunity granddaughters :)

There's still a fews more to do, but at least I got a start on them.

Show and Tell

While in Lethbridge last week, Mickey and I spent considerable time scrapbooking  We set up our stuff on my large table in the sunny dining room and just left it there the whole time we were there.  When we needed to eat we cleared two individual spots for our plates to sit, and quickly cleared the dishes away when we were finished.  At the end of the week, Mickey had completed well over 30 layouts while I plodded along at my usual slow pace and completed 11. 

Here are a few of mine from the week.

Kenny's first school picture - Kindergarten

Elly and Grammie - I chose the orange theme to match her hair

The Woolf Family - daughter Amy, her husband and kids

I really got the shot of this layout crooked. Amy reminds me of my mother in this picture.

I found the perfect paper for my hummingbird pictures

Finally got Quinn's 1st birthday scrapped.  She'll be 2 in July.

Love this picture of Quinn when she's full of cake.

Lloyd and I in Goldfield, AZ in February.  Sister and BIL in the bottom picture.

Wendy and I with our new beaux in Scottsdale, AZ in Feb.

Labor Day Layouts and More

We've had a lovely Labor Day weekend...peaceful and quiet. I finally got back to doing some scrapbooking. Using a Basic Gray page kit, I did four layouts of our newest baby, Quinn Sadie Hardwicke-Brown.

That makes me all caught up on the newborn pictures of this year's baby grandchildren.

First, in March was Hannah Rose MacKenzie.

Followed two months later in May by Tate Curtis Woolf.

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And two months after that, in July, Quinn was born.

Now I have to go back and do layouts with baby pictures of some of the first 17 grandbabies I didn't have a chance to do yet. A lot of them were born before I started scrapbooking. I can't see being totally caught up in a long, long time. Scrapbooking...the hobby that never ends.

Old Pictures

This weekend, spent in Lethbridge, Lloyd and I became the recipients of a dozen or so of Lloyd's mother's photo albums. I think because I'm a scrapbooker everyone considers me the custodian of the photographs. This past year I have also become the caretaker of my mother's photo album collection.

It's fun to go through those old pictures 'remembering' events and people caught in snapshots of daily life and special events. However, many of the pictures are mysteries to us - who are these people? why do we have pictures of them? how important or trivial are they to our family? Others are considered important, milestone, classic pictures with stories to tell.

Mum and Dad with their three children and spouses, and 11 grandchildren - 1986

Dad (center) with his parents and sisters - 1930

Dad and me - 1948

Going through my mother-in-law's photos this weekend we found several albums full of pictures of people we didn't know, fuzzy out-of-focus pictures, yellowed discolored pictures, etc. Thelma was very good at writing the who, where and when on the back of most of the pictures. That helps a lot. Still, Lloyd and I don't want to have albums full of people and events that mean absolutely nothing to us. His sisters aren't very interested in old pictures. So we have decided that we'll put them all on display at the family reunion in August and let everyone go through them and take any pictures they want (Lloyd and I have already taken the ones we want). The rest of the unwanted pictures will be trashed.

It made me think of all the thousands of pictures I've taken and collected. What will happen to them after I'm no longer here? Not every picture is a treasure so a lot will be thrown out I'm sure. However, the ones I put into scrapbooks will live on - the journalling on the pages will tell the family stories. Hopefully they'll be treasured.

Very important to Lloyd and me - the story of how I came to move from Nova Scotia to Edmonton in 1968.

A family classic - me in 1953 and a story to tell.

This whole process of going through old photos has made me realize that I must work more on my scrapbooks, especially the ones I consider heritage ones. I want our grandchildren and their children to be able to look at these books and enjoy the stories being told and gain insight into who they are and where they come from. I don't want our stories to die with us, and I want to preserve the stories of our parents and grandparents through these scrapbooks.

So, a final word of advice. Take a few minutes to write names, dates, locations, etc. on the back of your photos so that those coming after you will know the important data when they do their scrapbooks. And keep taking pictures! And if you're looking for a new hobby to take all your time and money, consider scrapbooking. You'll never regret it.