School Days

I remember from the time I was a little girl, mom always kept the yearly photos of each of her children. As I got older these pictures turned into the yearly school pictures. There was always a place in our home showing the yearly picture of each of the children in our family. These pictures also had to be provided to each of the grandmother's, so they could proudly display them on top of the television, or somewhere else prominent -- where all visitors to their homes would see. I never really thought much about these pictures, other than when we looked at them later, when mom and dad were moving, and Nikki and I would laugh over the lack of fashion sense, the ridiculous make-up, and of course the hair do's that we couldn't stop laughing at.

At that move, mom gathered up all the pictures, and memorabilia of our lives, and put them in large piles in the middle of the living room in Kaysville. One pile for each child. And she ultimately sent those pictures home with each of us. I don't know about my siblings -- I know James' wife Kris is pretty good with scrap booking, and she has been working hard to get all of their pictures, and things organized. For the rest of us, however, and me in particular, these pictures ended up in various boxes, forgotten. At least until I would trip over them, or accidentally pull them down on my head, while trying to get to something else in my closet. This year, starting with last Christmas, we have all decided to get on the "family history" band wagon, and do these family project for our family. This has led me to a general desire to get all of mine organized, in some fashion.

I have started several projects, and explored several different options. And I have found them all frustrating. Scrap booking is just not for me, at least in the traditional format, because ultimately I just can't stand the mess it creates -- and I am not that patient of a person. I am an organizer, not a creator. I have tried just putting them in books, without all the cutsie fuss, and that frustrated me, because all of my pictures, like my life, are never the exact size to fit in the pre-designed books you can buy in the store. I have tried the Google web-site, and I just don't like the format it appears in, and it is much harder to work with, than the blogs have proven to be.

All of this ultimately led me back to this blog, with a subscription to a picture site where I can make them into books electronically. The blog is more appealing to my style of presentation, and the picture site, I will be able to do electronic "scrapbooks" that should I choose to, I eventually can order online, without having all the mess in my home. Of course this leaves the originals in the same old boxes. But no one can see those pictures anyway.

So, as I started the organizational process, I had to decide where to start. I finally decided the best place to start, is with the beginning -- with me. That brings me back to the yearly pictures. I have literally hundreds of these pictures, since they always came in packets, with every size you can dream of. And buried in the middle of these pictures, I came across the set that Grandma Armstrong had kept, which mother had returned to me, upon Grandma's passing. Why did I find this set of pictures any different from the rest? Because Grandma Armstrong, true to form, had labeled the back of every picture with both the year they were taken, and the age I was, at that time. I had forgotten that habit of hers, until that moment, when I came across that stack of pictures, neatly piled together, all the same size, and all with the exact same label on the back -- the year, and my age. Why did that stand out to me? The result is the slide show at the top of this blog. Thanks to Grandma Armstrong, I didn't have to spend forever trying to guess at which picture came first, and what order did those pictures belong in.

So I am using this blog as a beginning. And a reminder of everything I am, and everyone that has helped me to get there. Like Grandma Armstrong, there has never been a person in my life that has not had some kind of influence on me, in helping to shape me into the person I have become. And why do I choose to separate this blog, from my other one? Well, this one is going to be more the scrapbook, and the history. My other one is more of my thoughts, my ideals, my reading -- and a look into the person I actually am today. I hope you enjoy this blog -- and I would like to thank each and every person that is so important to me, that has helped me to put this together throughout the years.