Portrait album

The family portrait album is complete.  For now.  It was a labor of love, but sometimes it really felt like a loss.  It was so hard to look back over the faces and remember the past, good and bad.  I had to work on it in stages because I found myself wishing I could hold my babies - as babies - one more time.  And it didn't help that we were all socially distancing.  I miss my peeps so much.

This is my family of 5 - Jeannette, Marlin, Gina, Melissa, ca. 1964 ( my mother was expecting my brother, Kurt) and the second portrait is the ONLY picture of all of my mother's children in one place, ca. 1976.

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This project forced me to revisit the past many times over as I was collecting portraits from frames and storage.   I am proud of myself for keeping them all protected for so long!

 Hubby as an infant and his mother's second wedding.

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It also taxed my memory and my organization skills!  

Casual family portraits made their way in, too

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I tried to tell a story with some of the pages - with others I was simply thinking "I need to protect all of these pictures" - even if they were reprints from Walgreen's that had once been in frames.  I scanned them ALL before I inserted them into the album.  

School portraits of The Girl - I had so. many. school. portraits.  And I had to put everything in some sort of order.  {What do you want to bet that I find more somewhere in the house, even though I think I am sooo organized?}

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I also scanned a bunch of 8x10's from the kids' baby books, so that I would always have a copy, because I will give each one of them their baby book some day. One of their stocking stuffers this year is that they each get a memory stick with ALL of their portraits, so they can do whatever they want with them, and I know the images will be safely stored digitally.  What they choose to do with it is up to them.  Here are some of my favorites that I have missed seeing:

Firstborn and The Girl, 1993.  They were so adorable - those faces got kissed a LOT.  At one point I thought I would only have two children...

Scout and Bubbie - two buddies.  Even in this picture their personalities shine and reflect who they are still.  Scout's face shows he was a kind little boy.  Bubbie was generally suspicious of photographers unless a sibling was present!

 Bubbie and me - I had a feeling he wouldn't pose by himself so I got dressed to be included and yep, he wouldn't.  He was my little friend that went everywhere with me every day until he went to Kindergarten - what a happy time it was!

The Girl on the way and Firstborn on my lap.  We look so young - we were 30 - and we assumed life was going to be peachy {every peach has a pit, tho...}, and Firstborn was the easiest baby This was a photo for the church directory and the only copy I have.  In fact, a lot of the portraits are one and only's as Hubby and I rarely had money for such things.  I took advantage of freebie offers a lot!

Now all that's left to do is get a vinyl transfer for the front of the album that says "The Cannary Family" and I have a favorite Etsy shop I order from for that.  The album will live in the lower shelf built into the coffee table in the front room.  And whenever anyone wants to trip down memory lane, it will be there.  But I think I've seen enough of the past lately and I am happy to have this project crossed off my list!

Gina