A little reminiscing.

I am not much into Christmas morning events, since I don't have little kids at home.  So DH and I tell each other what we would like, and usually it's one nice thing.   I got him a remote starter for his truck, which he already had installed to beat the after Christmas rush.
So, it was only fair that I get to have my present when it was delivered to the back door.

I got a Canon scanner, I saved myself a lot of trouble googling to find out which one to buy, since KATE over at Chronicles of a Country Girl had already done such an awesome job of selling it a while back.
I tried to download the setup onto my MacPro a few nights ago.  No go.  Sometimes, though I love my Mac, it is a pain you know where.  It is especially a pain when you are trying to get it to do what it does not want to do.
Anyway, last night, I was going to load it onto  the desktop that DH uses, but the thought of crawling around down on the floor to find the plug, and move plugs around, to make room, well, it wasn't very appealing.
So I gave the Mac another shot.
And lo, and behold, it worked like a charm.

Up to the attic to get a box of pictures.  You know what you're in for, right?
Oh, there will be stories to go along.  For sure.

I have to start with one of my favorite pictures of all, my three girls at Stonehenge.
Have I ever mentioned that they are the best thing that ever happened to me??
Holly, Morgan, Brooke.
I will always be the luckiest Mom ever.

 

I bet Sandy Hook has made every Mom everywhere stop and treasure her children.
To even imagine losing them at such a tender age is incomprehensible.
And yet, back in the day, our ancestors lost children so often, and so easily.  From a cold, an ear ache, sicknesses that today just keep them watching cartoons for a couple of days.

This is my grandmother.  Vivien. She was ahead of her time, driving a Model T around town when women just didn't much do that.
Her mother died when she was a teenager, and she brought up her younger siblings, with not much help from her hard drinking father.
In the cemetery, there were already a row of babies, her sisters and brothers that didn't make it past toddlerhood.

It has been said that I am very much like her, and her only son, my father.

Here I am, 25 years ago......when I still permed my hair.  Ha!  Makes me laugh.
I also laugh because I remember how stressed I was back then, and how much drama there was in my life.  That I allowed.  My expression says it all.

So many things have changed with getting older.
It's not all bad, ya know.  It really isn't.
It's just not what I expected, which makes it my "new normal".
And it's fine.  Just fine. 
I am grateful for all of it.