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.
4 comments:
The night before my Dad's funeral, my mom gave my brothers and sister and I letters that my Dad had written to us before he died - it is priceless to me. She also made books for us with pictures, the talks from his funeral, the program, and many other things that I will keep forever. Someday my children will be able to look back at these things, and remember the special man that was their Grandpa. I commend you for wanting to write things down, your children and grandchildren will thank you for it someday. Good job, Hillary!
And you started this blog. you are definetly on the fast track. keep up the writing momentum and you litterary works will be greatly treasured for years to come.
Great post. I didn't remember that picture, i know shocking. But probably the funniest part about the pic, is the Yamaha shirt you are wearing!!
Loved your words about our family.
I love that post. I am totally the same way. The Spirit of Elijah is the REAL THING! The things we write and save are absolutely priceless. I love doing it not only for my kids and theirs, but for myself. It's so good for me to re-read things. One of the best things I've done is made hardbound storybooks for my kids (www.lifetalesbooks.com). I wrote the story of how Kevin & I met, dated, got married. I also took all the old pictures of my ancestors that I scanned and put them into one book with a couple of paragraphs about each person. It's more kid-friendly than a 200-page history, and they can put names with faces that way, too. I'm also making for each of my kids for their 12th birthday a book of their 4-generation pedigrees, with pictures and some good info about what each of those people was really like. Anyway... didn't mean to have my comment longer than your original post. It's just that I'm right there with you! So invaluable!!
By the way, I'm just catching up on blogs (haven't read any for weeks), so... love the walk across the bridge and the peach tarts! MMM!! :)
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