It is still Christmas at our house. I was given a novel for Christmas and I’m about half way through it,  ‘An Irish Country Christmas’ by Patrick Taylor. It’s a beautiful inspiring story, very Irish. And I refuse to take down our tree or put away our decorations until I finish it!

Of course, regardless of my state of decorations and reading material, time moves on … and some of us still make self improvement resolutions. This year I promised myself not to make any since I can rarely even remember what they were by Valentines Day.

However, my adult niece, Melissa and I have taken on the project of organizing boxes and boxes as well as stacks of family photo albums acumulated over the last 70 years. I sort in Pennsylvania and she scans them to cds in Texas. When the project is complete, we will give more than 30 complete photo history cd sets to family members. And we will present my parents, (her grandparents), with all their photos back in acid free albums.

It is a melancholy and sentimental journey as I sort, and label with names and dates, the photos into the appropriate decade. Years seem to slip through my fingers like sand.

It will be good for the younger generations in our family to see photos of their great aunts and uncles, their great grandparents and grandparents, realizing they were young once too.  And hopefully realize that youth is a fleeting experience for everyone. Photo after photo of the same faces glowing with the confidence of youth’s invulnerability fade into the stern looks of middle age and elderly stares of contempt mixed with satisfaction. (The level of satisfaction seems to be in direct correlation of how they fared the Great Depression of the early 1930’s.)

This project as well as watching my mother’s brave fight against cancer makes me want to live each day to the fullest and cherish each moment I spend with friends and family, NOT just in 2009 BUT every minute of every year I have left on this earth.

(That’s not really a New Years Resolution, is it??)

Till next time… Ann