Scanning Family Photos - A Few Favorites

It’s the 4th of July weekend and I’m taking time to scan some old slides from our family. They are on our flickr site. Today I’m sharing some thoughts about some of my favorite photos from this batch of scanned slides. I don’t have time to scan every week to scan, but I’m thinking of following Sally’s “Wordless Wednesday” except using scans rather then current photos. 

First day of school photos are always fun. We had just moved to Ames, IA and our two oldest girls were off to their first day of school in a new town. Donna was going into 2nd grade and Jeni into kindergarten. Of course we also had to include Suzanne in the photo since she thought she should be going to school too. School was just across the street from our home so the girls would walk to school and home for lunch. It was an ideal location for us and the kids.

As I look back on these photos I have such positive emotions. You can see excitement in girls faces. I took 3 photos of Jeni along our back deck and each one captures a little different expression – serious, whimsical, and classic Jeni. You can see the twinkle in her eyes and the excitement behind them. Another memory this photo brings back is that it was my first full-time university position at Iowa State University. I was awfully excited about being an assistant professor, maybe even more excited than the kids. 

My final photo is of my father and Sally. For me it is the epitome of being a grandpa, relaxing with a young lady on my arm (Sally was 3 in this photo). Dad had been reading to Sally and they both went to sleep, Sally first. I remember when I was young I was taking a nap with Dad and he fell asleep. I wasn’t of the age where I wanted to lay there with Dad, however, I didn’t want to him to be lonesome. To solve the problem I put my teddy-bear in the same place my head had been on Dad’s arm. Later I got to feeling guilty and went back, thanking teddy for saving my spot.

Memories are usually fun and the become more fun the older they are, but that’s because they change over time and we reinforce the positive and dismiss the negative. I like that.