From left my cousins Jared, Shannon, Kevin, my brother Leland, my Grandpa Anderson holding me, my sister Holly, my cousin Karleen holding my cousin Sarah. I love these people, I love my Gram for taking this photo and I love my parents for keeping it.This past week in the 109 degree weather my a/c went out so my parents graciously let us come stay at their house. While I was up there and not worrying about cleaning every bedroom, doing laundry and basically jut having a mini vacation, I went through several old photo albums and I found one that my grandmother kept of my grandfathers death. It had letters of condolences, a 17 page journal written on scratch paper about his hospitalization, the talk that was given at the funeral and a letter from my Grandfathers brother Kirk Anderson. The book is priceless and I will begrudgingly give it back to my parents when I have finished copying all the photos I want. But more importantly it made me think about keeping records for my kids. I have done an adequate job at this with baby books and photo albums, but it made me want to write more. I want to write about experiences, funny things that people said, characteristics that my family members have and things like that. I write Auri a letter about every 6 months and I like going back and reading the old ones. I write to her what toys she liked, what foods she liked, what made her laugh (it is usually Max), I told her how we choose her name, how her dad and I met, what the weather was like when she was born and when we brought her home. I hope she will appreciate these letters, but more importantly I hope her kids will appreciate them. It's good to read about our ancestors. We learn a lot about ourselves. My grandmother liked keeping records, so do I. I feel like I inherited the "Spirit of Elijah" from her. I wonder who she got it from.
In short I am really happy my grandmother kept this record and it has inspired me to do more.
