Barely Doll Related, but you do get to see me as a baby!

Hello Dear Readers,

It's been almost a week since I got back from my trip and I'm now in a place where I can talk about it. I went up to Connecticut to see my extended family. We made the trip because my dad's idiot brother made the ultimatum that either my Dad comes up when he's visiting or else he and my other uncle were going to come visit us, and we certainly do not want that. So my parents and I packed up the car and made our way north. I had the option of not going but I wanted to see my Mother's side of the family. On my dad's side both of my Grandparents have passed and the one good aunt doesn't make up for dealing with the rest of them. I half jokingly said the only time we'd be together as a family would be at my funeral. I feel a little bad since there is a couple people on that side I'd at least like to know as people, but it's kind of a package deal and in this case it's a package you refuse delivery on for your sanity. I was able to spent a lot of time with my Grandparents and my favorite aunt. Those are the people I really miss seeing since we moved south. The trip up wasn't terrible, it was 12 hours but that's the best that it's going to be. The trip home was terrible, I got sick, and we got stuck in traffic and it ended up being 15 hours. By the time we got home, I was very fed up with being in the car.

I did do a little thrifting while I was up there, I didn't find much. I bought a (found out later rather TLC) Barbie Basics Ken and a Birthstone Beauty Steffie doll in a crushed box. The thrift stores were kind of lame, most of them didn't have any dolls, and not even just a lack of fashion dolls. One of them had one mass produced porcelain doll and two baby dolls, and that's it for dolls in the entire store. Kind of a clunker in that aspect, but I wasn't there for shopping and it's not like I really need anything. I should still be working on downsizing, not adding more.

I got a lot of time to work on scanning up there. One of the things I worked on when I was there last October was scanning. Back then I got around a thousand pictures scanned, this time I did over 500. There's still a LOT of pictures to scan, but I got a big chunk done, and that's more than anyone else has done (seriously, I'm the only one whose ever scanned anything). And since this is my blog and you're my rapt audience, I'm going to share select ones with you (I promise it'll be less than the full 500).

They kind of jump all over the place, they're mostly kids since I didn't want to post any adults for *security* concerns. 

My Grandmother, age 13 or 14. She's extremely photogenic. I did not inherit that from her!

My Grandfather, age 6. He turned 90 last September.

My two oldest aunts, I wish the doll was better in focus so I could identify it. I'm not totally sure where this picture was taken, it looks like the den, but the windows are reversed to how they actually are. I think this is 1956?

My first birthday, June 1987

Me, Summer 1988. I wish I was still blond.

Christmas 1992 (I think) at my Grandmother's house

My cousin in my Grandmother's kitchen. My Grandmother's kitchen looks basically the same, new dishwasher but the same cabinets. My Great-Grandfather built those cabinets. That cousin is turning 40 in less than a month, don't need to say that, but I wanted to.

Me again. The dog behind me is Mac. Mac would go on to bite me in the face, leaving me with several scars. I assume this is before then (Mac lived a long full life post the biting).

"Red with Jewels" my mother's favorite childhood pet, wearing one of her favorite pieces of jewelry. The record cabinet and that small table are still in my Grandmother's living room. Red lived a full life, this picture was taken before he lost an eye in a bar fight.

My Great-Grandmother, you can see where my Grandmother got her good looks.

There's still plenty of work to do with the pictures. There's still tons left to scan, and I've done nothing with identifying or cataloguing anything. I did keep track of anything that was written on the backs of the images, but didn't do anything beyond that. I'm pretty good at identifying my Great-Grandparents (especially I only alive for one of them and they died when I was 6 months old), but there's a variety of people I don't know. It's a long term project, as I was telling someone, there's six generations of pictures in that house. There's a LOT of pictures.

And P.S. The cat didn't lose an eye in a bar fight. He did lose an eye, but we don't know how.