You haven’t really lived until you have waded through hundreds of pictures while sitting in a garage on a hot Texas day, with only a fan to keep the air moving… Heidi and Brad, Heather and Scott and their boys, Seamus and Hudson, along with Kip and me, were real troopers. We at least got a good start and all agreed working on this daunting task together was the right thing to do.
Mason and family live in Wyoming and couldn’t make it. Craig had to work, so they had to take a pass. The girls set aside a box or two for them to peruse.
I had the top picture taken for Father’s Day the first year Kip and I were married. The 2nd one includes a surprise for our 25th anniversary. Now each of these kids has 2 of their own and Heidi has 3 beautiful grand-children. With spouses, we’re now a family of 21.
Kip impressed Seamus with a fossilized monkey wrench. (It did look petrified.) Hudson got a fossilized shell.
After cleaning the turkey fryer the day before, I decided to serve turkey wraps with turkey from the deli along with chips for lunch. I did, however, make delicious homemade vanilla ice cream for dessert. Heidi took a break at the end of the day to read some of her papers from 3rd grade. We even found a dental mold of Kip’s teeth, and every men’s cologne bottle Avon ever made, courtesy of his mom. My fourth and fifth grade report cards were packed away, and we found newspapers from 1914 and 1928.
In our storage boxes we found a whole box of napkins leftover from our wedding. Can’t throw those away…(We’ll use them for camping.) There was a list someone gave me after Dad’s funeral with all the names of people I should thank and what they contributed to the luncheon 37 years ago. (I hope I wrote them all notes.) Also carefully packed were Craig’s cub scout shirt, a picture of Mason standing by the Flying Penny, the car we bought him that he hated, Heather’s drawings, stories, and a teeny tiny note she wrote to Kip that said, “If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t even be here.”
They looked through some of the 262 record albums they remembered listening to over and over again, including Bobby Bare’s, Singing in the Kitchen and Tom T. Hall’s Sneaky Snake. We looked through tons of pictures of our extended families and set aside things for Heidi’s two kids and their families.
I compared the picture of me with granddaughter, Olivia and me with Grandma Sanderson. I love that Grandma and I are reaching for each other’s hand. The third picture is of Kip with baby, Heidi. He said she had a bow taped to her head.
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The boys played checkers and petted the cat. Later, thinking I could cool off a little, I volunteered to take them to a local arcade. They wanted to play putt putt golf…outside in the heat. They each made a hole in one…very exciting.
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This is the last thing I looked at, which explains all those things we save from the days our kids were growing up.
I get it…we don’t want them to disappear…
“A child is someone who passes through your life, and disappears into an adult.”