Childhood re-claimed!

The week after New Year's, I had planned to visit California for a friend's wedding and another friend's new baby, and I decided ahead of time to spend a full day hitting one of those bucket-list to-do's and to look through about 8 boxes of my Dad's old slides that are archived safely, but never brought out.

We ended up making digital copies of about 300 (out of thousands) and I printed about 50 or 60 for myself and friends. But the real benefit to it was something I can barely even articulate.

There were many, many picutres of myself that I don't think I ever had seen over the years, even though I can remember sometimes taking the picture. My parents were good about printing the "best" copies for our albums and always saved school photos from each year, but there's tons of candid shots that I didn't remember, and there were a couple years that they didn't print at all - when we moved from Boston to California (1982-1984). And I must say, my Dad is an amazing photographer. He used to be involved in a couple of Boston Camera Clubs and won several awards there. Sometimes his slides of us (like the one above) were just a filter test or lighting test, but those are some of my favorites.

Here's some of my favorite surprises, starting with Kristen reading to me when I came home from the hospital (under the quilt which later became a teeny shred -- but I still have the book!)
Kristen with Richard, our lion

me in our Lexington yard - it's no wonder we both still love patterns on everything

my famous cheeks

Kristen age 6

my mom was very ambitious with cake-baking!
at the Cape

at Universal Studios

at Disney