A Blast from the Past.

I was helping my mom with her digital camera, and so got into her picture files....LOOKIE LOOKIE what *I* found!

Pictures from my childhood that she had scanned in.

At the left is my grandfather, Orville Harpel.  The little kids are my cousin Lee, who died of complications from by-pass surgery a couple of years ago--FAR TOO YOUNG.  He was a very good person.  Holding on to him is my sister Kim, two years younger than me, then my cousin Rhonda, Lee's sister, who is the same age as Kim.  Next to her is my sister Joni, who is four years younger than me.  Then I think it is my cousin Orville (not a brother to Lee and Rhonda), the baby is his sister Pam, in front of her is their brother Scott, and next to her is their brother Gene who was the whiniest, bawliest, poutiest, snivelingest kid I have ever known.  And at the end is me.  I suppose I was seven or eight in that picture.  I was so cute when I was little.  No one really knows what happened....LOL.

I am not sure whose birthday this is...It looks like my sister Kim is opening a gift--I am on her left--if that is her fifth birthday, I'd be going on seven.  To her right are my sister Joni who would have been giong on three, and my cousin Rhonda, the same age as Kim.  My dad is standing behind holding Lee who'd be around two.

This was somebody's birthday too.  For some reason, I suspect it was mine.  My cousin Gene had a birthday near mine, so we usually had to celebrate them together at grandma's house, even though we despised each other.  LOL.

I am at the head of the line, holding Pam.  Then it is Rhonda, Kim, Gene, Scott, Joni, Orville, and Lee.

This picture was taken in my grandmother's dining room.  Behind me is this wonderful fern she had.  I always loved that thing.  It lived through my whole childhood and died at some point in my early years of teaching.

These are my great grandparents, Mary and Andrew Smith.  He was an ornery old cuss who frequently broke into Danish.  I remember his big white mustache.  He was quite a bit older than my great-grandma.  She passed away when I was doing my student teaching, and he had been gone long, long before that.

This picture is taken in their living room in front of her piano. 

This is my great-grandmother and my great-aunt Nettie one Sunday afternoon...they stopped out and found my mom canning tomoatoes, so they each grabbed a cup of coffee (they were all big coffee drinkers) and helped her can all her tomatoes.  They were both such sweet, wonderful ladies.  I miss them and wish I had spent more time with them when they were alive.

There is my mom's mom, my grandma Ollie.  She was a corker.  She could work people half her age into the ground and keep on going.

I miss her too.

And there are my dad's parents, Orville and Vivian, with my cousin Lee.  He was a very handsome young man.  He passed away on July 27, 2005 at the age of 45.  He left a wife and five children.  It was a very sad thing.

Something went wrong during by-pass surgery that cut the oxygen to his brain off--and, though his body was healing beautifully, his mind was gone.  We hoped for two weeks for a miracle, but then the family let him go.