Goals in 2013

     I love looking at old scrapbooks, with photos of our children growing up, trips, county fair projects, horses and such.  I tend to take photographs, mostly a rather off and on basis.  Oh I love photos of people and things going on, I just don't like being that person behind the camera trying to get every little moment.  Sometimes the moment is lost on the person behind the camera trying to snag that perfect picture.

     I have learned to take my camera with me most places, that doesn't mean I'll take a picture, I might have that camera, but leave it in the car, duh!   Lucky for me that my phone has a wonderful camera and I don't have to miss something really important.



     This year, as year long goal, I have decided to organize my life a little by making some photo books from an online photo company.  I had no idea how terribly unorganized I really am.  I have put my digital photos on my computer and they are being saved on a separate hard drive.  I still have a million photos that are sitting in boxes on the shelf behind me as I sit at my computer.  They are taunting me in their boxes, crying out to be looked at and acknowledged, it has probably been 15 years since I've worked on any scrapbooks.  Time somehow gets away from me.  Not only that, I would rarely write names or dates on the back of my pictures.  I'm not proud of this fact..........

My Grandfather
Ralph DeRemer (post card to
my Aunt Corrine DeRemer Fazio)

     Now we are getting to the overwhelming part of my life.........  The first photo book I wanted to put into order was related to my DeRemer ancestors.  I have spent the last two years trying to find photos of my grandparents, my aunts, my father and my cousins.  It seems the family doesn't have lots of photos for some reason or another.  Were they lost when my grandparents passed on.  Did my aunts keep them and when they passed on, were they lost then or tossed, because no one could identify the pictures? No one seems to know what happened to all the photos. 

    
     I was blessed to actually see and scan pictures my father had taken and kept for years, they are the most this family has of our history in pictures or otherwise.  There are some really old photos of my dad and his sisters growing up and of his parents.  The Uncles, Aunts and cousins of my grandparents are also there and unlabled, it's a guessing game.  Some of the family was luckly enough to gather this summer and more of the photos were identified.  These are the photographs I want to make into photo book.  The difficulty for me is making sure I have the right names with the right photos and this is crtical to future family history.  It is also going to take LOTS of time!


Civil War Photo of Earl Randall's
Grandfather, center, Joseph Wesley Randall
and his four brothers, they
enlisted together.

     My wonderful husband has a cousin, Mary, who has graciously shared many old family photos of their grandfather and his family.  What a treasure it was to have these pictures with names and in some cases dates they were taken!

     It was then that I realized.........  all those pictures in boxes, behind me at the computer and all those pictures in the computer MUST get names tagged to them or someday they too will be unidentifiable to a later generation.  I know my children won't want to keep every picture I ever took, but they certainly won't keep the ones that they have no idea who is in the photo. 

     So my January 2013 has already overwhelmed me with work.  I am determined to label my photos in the computer.  I am determined to make photo books with family, names and years, and hopefully our family history will be there for the next generations. 

     It is an overwhelming project, I have discovered that it IS important to know from where you came.  Opening that door in my life has changed everything I once knew and the puzzle pieces are being fitted together, our ancestors will be remembered.

Waterbed Hippies

Well it finally happened, we are finally growing up......  Well, sort of........  Well, maybe not too quickly anyway and in small increments.  A couple weeks ago our waterbed sprung a leak.  It is the second time since the 70's that this has happened.  This was big compared to the first.  Dry, warm and comfy one night and cold, wet feet the next night.  Water in the liner was major. 

So we decided to look at something different.  All of our children have sleep number beds and love them.  So we went to see what the fuss was about.  And the salesperson did an excellent job of making us totally comfortable.  Maybe we shouldn't have gone in the late afternoon, when nap time sometimes calls us ever so gently now and then.  Yes, it was comfy and I could have napped while pondering the choice of another waterbed or the sleep number.  Not exactly what the salesperson encouraged.

Almost two weeks later the new bed arrived.  We have just slept the third night on this overpriced air mattress and I LOVE it!  So we are no longer hippies from the 70's.  We are reaching our mid-life crisis it seems.  I guess that isn't so bad, we are in our 60's!