Memories

We recently found out that my Nan (Dad's Mum) has cancer. She is 84. I had a dream during the week that made me want to go out there and go through all of her old photos with her. When I woke up from the dream I was worried that one day that both my grandparents won't be around and a lot of the information and memories that they have will be lost unless I ask them about it now. I know that some of my cousins and Aunts and Uncles have spent time with them doing this before but it is not the same as doing it for yourself.

We went out there and saw my Pop first who was in hospital. He had a few falls last week and hasn't been very well in the past year. When we walked in we weren't sure how he would be or if he would even know who we were as he often has periods from time to time where he doesn't really know about much of what is going on. It was wonderful though as he was looking quite good and was chatty and knew who we all were. I wheeled Noah up next to him and he started talking to him about 'building the boat' together (Noah's Ark) which made us all laugh.


We then went for a tour of my old schools. Deloraine is only about 40 minutes from Launceston (where we live) but I have never really taken my boys or Aaron to the schools that I used to go to. We went to the High School first which actually hadn't changed very much from when I was there over 17 years ago! It looks very run down.

We then went over to the Primary School which was a lot nicer and a lot different to when I was there. Jalen and Harrison had a great time playing on all the equipment and we just had to get a photo in front of the sign out the front! Jalen kept on laughing saying he didn't want to stand there - he cracks me up with how much he has grown up lately. Last year he wouldn't have cared!



We then went to see Nan. When we got there she had all the photo albums out on the table ready for us. Aunty Deidre had put together a beautiful scrapbook for her 80th birthday so she had saved me a lot of time as she already had a lot of people's names written next to photos. It was so fun to go throuh it with Nan and to hear all of her great stories - especially of how she met Pop and about all of her boyfriends!

Nan is famous for her beautiful sponge cakes that she makes and she had made one for us for afternoon tea but didn't have time to put cream on it, so we were lucky and got to bring it home! I kept telling Aaron and the boys that Nan makes the best sponge cakes and they agreed with me the next day when we had it after tea!

I now have all of Nan's photo albums here at home and am in the process of scanning ALL of her photos. I am wanting to do it so that everyone in the family has a copy of all of their photos. I also love to make DVD montages of songs and photos together and want to make one of Nan and Pop's lives. I am excited to finish scanning so I can start working on this. So far I have only done about a quarter of the photos in just the scrapbook and it has taken me about 10 hours already! It will be worth it though.

We had such a great day visiting Nan and Pop and reminiscing about the old days. The boys also loved spending some time with them.