Way back in the day...

Almost every picture that exists of me from the time of my birth to when I graduated from high school is on a little slide.  The ones where you have to hold them up to the light to see what they are.

When I was a little girl, one of my favorite things to do was sit with my family in our formal living room with golden brown carpet and the red couch with black, gold and white flowers on it and the red chairs that would both spin and rock, and the curtains across the bow window with the gold tassels, and look at slides of when we were little...little-er...two slides at a time.

We didn't have one of those fancy slide projectors where the slides were on a round carousel wheel type thing and you could watch 50 slides at a time.  No.  We had a slide projector that would hold two slides at a time.  You'd put one slide in and turn it clockwise so the slide would show through the light, and then you'd add another slide on the opposite side and then you'd just keep alternating new slides into the little window.

Needless to say, there would always be big breaks of time in between slides where we, the kids, would get to practice our shadow puppet tricks.

I can still make a great dog.

So after years and years of these slides being in drawers in my parents' living room, with so many pictures never seen, I sneaked (would it be sneaked, or snuked....hmmmm)  into my parents house and took the slides, entire drawers and all, out of the desk, borrowed my cousins' slide scanner and scanned in almost 200 slides to make this for my parents for Christmas.  

Because my parents don't need ANYTHING.  And if they do need anything, they buy it themselves.  They're so not fun to buy for.

So I made them this little snippet of what's to come.  I love putting family pictures to music to make videos.  I did it for a few years for my family and then my computer got to bogged down and trying to get the music and the timing all down...it took forever and my butt doesn't need to get any flatter from sitting on an office chair.

Probably nobody but family will enjoy this.  My brother Ryan wanted me to put it on my blog.  If you're not family and you decide to watch...I hope you still enjoy it.  It was awesome to see how classic my mom's style was.  Beautiful.  And to see my dad with a full head of hair...he looks so much like my brother Brad, and I can see so much of Jay too.  

Of course there are more pictures of my sister Jill.  She's the oldest.  And after me, the only time it seemed my parents got the camera out was for birthdays, and Christmas.  Occasionally they took pictures on family vacations.  Hallelujah for that!

A flooding of memories...it's neat to see the house we live in now in the pictures from more than 40 years ago.  And to see the green wallpaper and green carpet and hair styles and huge glasses and great grandmas at Christmas parties, big wheels, the little rocking chair Jill is sitting in which is in my bedroom right now, cut off shirts, family dogs, my dad's much loved cars and boats...it was hard to choose the pictures...there are so many great ones.

I've planned all along to scan all their slides so that we can enjoy the pictures of when we grew up, and now with my new, handy-dandy, awesome computer...it's been a snap!!  I might have just jinxed myself!

Will was awesome and helped me get it put together and was patient with me when I pushed too many buttons in frustration.  We were late to Christmas Eve at my parents house, because we were trying to get it finished.  And then I couldn't wait to give it to them, so as soon as we got there and the prayer on the food had been said, I spilled the beans, and we watched it.

It makes me cry every time I watch it.

160 slides down....thousands to go.

There you go Ryan!!!