Scrapbooking to the Rescue

 Last week by chance I ran into one of my dear cousins on FB. We PM messaged for a bit, what are you up to etc, she shared with me they were having a family reunion in August they would love for my Sister and I to attend. YAAAA One of our other cousins had set up a descendants FB page to share family photo's old and new. Double YAAAA. I spent WAY more time on the FB page than I should have catching up on cousins that were a part of my Sister and I daily life way back when. I shared a few photo's of our family now, who they are, how they are related and such. One thing lead to another, I ended up spending a few days scanning and sharing old photo's I had of our family. Talk about a pain in the rump!!! I was working with our scanner that is at least 12 years old, it was like pulling teeth to get the thing to work right :) After Kara hit my laptop with a slice of pizza I was out of business. That is until Monday. We are now the proud owners of a super fast wireless, very cool all in one printer, I love it!! The new laptop, grrrr windows 8.1 stinks!!!!!

 When our Father past away 10 years ago I had a gut feeling our family photo's would not end up in my Sister or my hands, turns out I was correct. Why do people think it's OK to be mean just to hurt others out of spite, I will never understand. Our Aunt who helped raise us after our Mother died was as heart broken as I was. She offered to share the photo's she had but didn't know how to make copies for me. I do, I do!!!! I began to scan photo's each month hubby and I visited them (they lived in IN) Once I returned home I would print the photo's then scrapbook them. On our next visit I would share what I had done and we would get back to scanning more.

 She had lots of obituaries from long ago...Humm maybe I should include them, we scanned away. Rather than mount them on pages I made envelopes to tuck them in then mounted them onto the pages.

 A poem my Grandmother had written long ago after her children had all left home. I typed it up then tucked the original in this envelope. Love that I have her handwriting preserved for future generations

 To aid me in all of this genealogy I took photo's of tombstones. Of course all had birth and death dates, many also have their parents name engraved, branch of service, even their own children or spouses name

 I stop working on this album after my Aunt passed. I had it put away until last week, it was just too emotionally hard to work on it alone. Today I am over the top excited that I have been able to share with the rest of our family far and wide a small piece of our heritage. I never in a MILLON years would have thought my Aunts documents and photo's would have been done away with, Such a crying shame :) So thankful she and I had the last few years of her life to make "our" album together. She would be tickled to death knowing her family has at least a bit of our family history to share

 As you can see I use to scrapbook a lot! Here is a sample of the albums that are complete :) Excuse the bits of paper taped to some of the albums. I use to have cute tags that were attached to each one. Then God blessed us with grands that pulled each and ever tag off, Ha Someday (maybe soon) I will drag out the label maker and get them all tagged again.

 Here is a small album I made of my Aunts home, yard, garden, barn, all that jazz as well as site's around town. My Aunt had Alzheimer's, she was still at home most of the time when we were working on "our" family album but eventually had to go to a nursing home to receive the care she needed. I would still bring "our" scrapbook to share with her each month but I got thinking she needed a little something of home to brighten her days.

We could talk for hours over one photo, the photo's would jog her memory.  I never knew what memory it might jog, sometimes it was laugh out loud funny for both of us. At times it would be heartbreaking to me but she showed no emotion, the stories just flowed. Towards the end I got that gut feeling again. This little memory book of her daily life was sure to disappear after her passing. I took it home with me :) Such sweet memories of the time we were together and things were as normal as they could be with someone who had Alzheimer's. There home was sold soon after they moved to the nursing home, but we still have this little album to remind us of times we spent there

I haven't scrapbooked in years. Four years to be exact, once the little girls came along back to back with Mason man's delivery hot on their heels there just wasn't and hasn't been the time. Now Tater Tot has joined our family :) Sewing is much less messy, takes so many less supplies, can be done lickity split unlike scrapbook that can take hours to complete one page.

I have SO MANY scrapbooking supplies organized neatly in "MY" room just sitting collecting dust. Once fall arrives I am going to try to fit one day a week to scrapbooking again. I want our DD's, grands, and whoever comes along the family line to have our family history, who we are, why we do the things we do preserved. I may end up going the digital route at some point but for now at least I need to use what I have :)

Are you lucky enough to have your families photo's and documents preserved? Do you really trust that they will be cared for in the future? If not don't put off getting copies. Once they are gone they can never be replaced :)