Long Relationships and Short Attention Spans
Looking back over this year, my very favorite event happened in November. To commemorate the day we met, my husband secretly invited family members and friends to spend the weekend here. (My sister told me she was coming for the weekend, so I was planning for visitors.)
We had a lovely four-day weekend of overlapping visits. The weather was beautiful, Cherished Neighbor Liz brought enough food to feed everyone, there was an exciting snake sighting, and we even had a visit from a young Batman!
Batman in the middle. There may be a Teen-age Mutant Ninja Turtle shell under the cape as well.
And everyone accommodated me in my favorite pastime of re-enacting old photos.
Here is the photo from the 1980s. We have my in-laws, my older daughter, and me. My husband took it from a rowboat in the pond.
Back in the 80s when my older daughter was a toddler.
In this first re-staged one, I was the photographer out in the pond, and my husband is standing roughly where his dad was in the original photo.
Re-enacting old photos.
Here my husband has taken over as photographer, and my mother-in-law and I are basically where we were in the original. It is so interesting to see how the dock and house have expanded over the years (just like a few of the people…). My older daughter is in the bright magenta shirt at the right, and her son is in her husband’s lap.
Celebration Day 2.
On the next day, my younger daughter and her husband came up, and I made everyone get out on the dock again! That may be why I had a hard time getting everyone to “look at the birdie.” But gosh, I love being able to take multiple frames. In the old days, you posed everybody properly and took that one shot, or two to be safe. Nowadays you just keep clicking, even when no one is looking, and you capture so many great moments.
It amuses me no end that the one person paying attention through every shot was an 8-year-old boy, the one you would most expect to be running around!
It was a fabulous weekend and I am grateful to everyone who shared their time with us!
Congratulations. More lovely memories!
Thank you! It is wonderful to be part of a happy memory that will now hopefully be passed to two more generations.
Thanks. Jim and I were just chewing over the year. A lot about it leaves us uneasy as we enter 2017. Focusing on one short, positive moment might be the way to feel better. Thanks for sharing yours.
I know what you mean, I am worried about 2017 too. Sometimes these pearls of happy memories help us hang on through the rough times, and I am so grateful for each one I can add to my memory string.
Blog friends help too! 🙂
8-yr olds are the most curiously!
I think I meant that curiosity peaks around 8yrs!
I know, you feel like every month past that that you can interest a child in something (before they get to the too cool to care stage) is a plus! 🙂
Great fun. My daughter came and ‘hit my closet running’………3 I/2′ wide, 9’ long plus huge room under the stairs…..I won’t tell you what ‘we’ took out, some things under duress!! But we found a stock pot full of photos and what a HOOT!!! What? I looked like that??????? Lots of belly laughs. Good for you getting the whole crew together on that deck. Happy New Year!!
I love old photos! But I am also glad I had my kids in the film age, so I only had 100 pictures from each year to process. I scanned them all, made everyone a back-up copy, and uploaded them to Flickr. Now if the house gets carried away in a hurricane, at least I will have my pictures! 🙂
Happy New Year to you too!
You sure know how to have fun–this is such a neat idea. That whole series, with people unfocused and doing their own things, just cracks me up!