My Scrapbooking Goals for 2010

My biggest digital scrapbooking goal for 2010 is to create special books for my family about the origins of our family.  I want to include not only the facts such as names and birth dates but I want to include special family stories and memories as well.  My mother passed away with Alzheimer's in 2008 and one of the most significant memories I have of those last few weeks is hearing my baby brother say one time, "I did not know that about Mama."  At the time, she thought I was her sister and she was wanting me to take her "honky-tonkin".  This came as a surprise to him for he did not know that when Mama still lived at home, she and her sisters often went their Father to barn dances and such where they sang and square-danced while he played the fiddle with a band.  He had never been around the kitchen table at Grandma's when all the girls would have their "hen-parties" and speak about their memories of "yesterday'.  I was...and I remembered.

Likewise, having married at age 17, and being close with my ex-in-laws through out my 23 years as a member of that family,  I have similar memories of that family.  I loved hearing all the stories from family members who have long since passed.  I know things that no one else in that family who is living today knows, or remembers, or experienced.  My  husband (#2 for ten years now)  has the same recollections from his family.  Like me, he was always fascinated by stories told by the elders of his family...and like me, his Father passed away with Altzheimers.

What happens if he and I develop Altzheimer's?  Will our kids understand when our past begins to influence our actions?  We have five sons between us but they do know really know much about their grandparents or all the other rich characters within these families that my husband and I have known and loved throughout our lives.  I want to leave something behind for them and for their children...I want to get it down before I forget it...before it is gone forever.  I realize, that for the most part, they think my love of scrapbooking is not real important, and I know that I am not going to be creating masterpieces such that I have seen in the galleries from the talented laout artists in our community but I also know that someday, someone I love is going to be so thankful for this digital "obsession" of mine.

Several years ago, my son Matthew and I cleaned the cemetery up on the hill.  He was out of work at the time and needed some extra money and I helped him.  We raked and hauled off years of leaves and tree branches which littered the ground along with the garbage left behind from those who had found nothing better to do on a summer night than to hide and out and drink booze up there on the hill.  It really did look so peaceful and serene after we mowed and everything was all cleaned up.  There is one section there that just has rocks for markers,  No names or dates, and no one knows who most of these graves belong to but we do know they are ancestors. Every one up there is somehow connected to the Phelps family.    I know they are in a better place with no more toil, no more sadness, no more sickness, and I made sure every rock, every marker had at least one flower beside it when I left that day for I wanted to show we do not forget.

I think this will be the introduction page of my Phelps book.  I will be using  the Artscow Blank Cover Templates from Studio Wendy for this book.  They make it so easy to keep your pretty pages inside the safe zone for printing at Artscow.  I will also be using the white 12x12 square white paper as my background so all my pages have a uniform look.  Its is from Prsitine by Studio Rosey Posey

 Happy Scrappin!