Never again . . .

will I feel guilty for spending time scrapbooking. I have always known it's a great hobby and sometimes I feel like I spend too much time messing with the pictures and all of the other "stuff" that comes with this great hobby. But yesterday, I spent a good 6 or 7 hours going through 2 boxes of old photos that I got from my dad at Thanksgiving. I've been dying to dive into those boxes but knew I needed to wait until after the holidays, so yesterday that is what I did. Here is what it looked like after I got the boxes emptied ~

I had quite the little mess going on . . .

But the sad part of all of this is that 99% of the photos were not marked in anyway, I was able to recognize part of them and was able to divide in to piles by different people, but I have some huge stacks of photos that I have no idea who these people are in them. The other thing it made me realize is that I know very little of my family history, what were my great grandparents name? uuummm, great grandma & great grandpa, that is how I knew them. So, I've started a notebook with everyone's name at the top, the next time my Dad is in town I hope that we can have some time to sit down and go through some photos and that he can help fill in the blanks of the many many questions I now have floating through my head.

This is exactly why scrapbooking is so much more than a hobby, it makes me so happy to know that for generations to come there will be no doubt in my grandkids grandkids who we are and what we did. And this is only half of my heritage, I have a feeling that things are not in any better condition on the other half of my family, that will have to be my next project.

So, now that I've got everything sorted, this is what I have to work with ~

And I love this old picture, I'm pretty sure it's my Grandfater Larry, Dad????