I'm working on a project I started over a year ago. I "stole" (my mom knows I have them, and so does my uncle) all the slides that my dad had from my grandparents with the intention of scanning them and putting them on DVD and giving them to my dad as a gift -- Father's Day, his birthday, Christmas, whichever was closest when I got them done. A lot of the slides are of run-of-the-mill stuff....weddings, short vacations, visits to my dad in college, stuff like that.... but there are also slides of the family's trip to Alaska, which is something my dad wants to do again, and also their cross-country trip to California. Last night I got the slides of these two trips together and organized (to the best of my ability) and am going to work my way through them first. I hope to get them done by Father's Day. Then my dad will know I have the slides and can help me organize the rest of them. :)

The scanning is a slow process. It's taken me about and hour and a half, over the course of two nights, to scan just 32 slides. That's almost one cartridge. I've got 4 more cartridges of Alaska to do and 8 of California to do. It's going to take a long time! But, it's been fun to look at the slides I have finished. They are almost 50 years old. It's not the first time I have seen them, but it's been about 20 years since I last saw them. I remember it vividly. My mom and dad, my brother and I, my aunt and uncle, and my cousins were all at my grandmother's and she insisted that we look at the slides. She also insisted on watching a tv program with Tennessee Ernie Ford. Some of the slides were quite funny to us kids, and my grandmother got upset with us for laughing and being louder than the tv.

Tonight, one of the slides I scanned was of my grandfather, my uncle and my dad and two people I don't know. What struck me was how much my brother looked like my dad at that age. If I hadn't known better, I would have sworn that someone messed around with the picture and put my brother's head on my dad's body. I was also struck by how much my dad now looks like my grandfather did then. I think it's going to be fun to go through the rest of these slides. I'm glad I have the opportunity to do it, because I would hate for these images to be lost, which could certainly have happened if they just stayed in my parents' basement until it was time for my brother and I to clear out the house after my parents are gone.