Project Life~What a Wonderful Life

Project Past Life has taken on a 'life' all it's own. What started as a way to
remember my parents has turned into treasured family time as each picture
we've looked out triggered a memory. We started out by pulling out all the
pictures from one box and sorting them into different categories; ancestor photos,
my childhood, life in Germany, and recent past.

Sorting this way is giving me an idea of how many albums I may need and quite
frankly, has made me feel a little overwhelmed with getting them all done.

For now, I'm giving myself permission just to focus on our time living in Germany
and very specifically my parent's visit to us then.

This process has brought up another level of sadness. We were overseas from
1999-2003 and I remember being so excited about my first home computer I keep
a journal mainly on floppy discs at that time. I had hoped to make use of them
during this process.

Unfortunately, they got wet and the files were corrupted.
Checking my old email accounts, they only go back to 2003,
so nearly all of my writing from my life in Italy and Germany is lost.

I started talking about what I knew of most pictures
I wrote it down what I remembered on a post it note and stuck it to the back.

Surprisingly there were a lot of memories.

A squeal of excitement brought my husband in to what we were doing.
I told him of Project Past Life and showed him the pictures we got to take
with Star Trek (the original series) star George Takei came to visit our post.
I don't remember much about his speech but I do remember how generous
with his time he was in talking to Josephine who was 9 at the time.

Lyle was in Iraq at the time and Mr. Takei autographed a picture specifically
for him to thank him for his service. Just looking at these pictures spun us into
a conversation about the other Star Trek conventions and stars we had met.

It's interesting to note how much of a difference Josephine's childhood was
as compared to my Lil' Bear. While we can't give him the experience of living in a 2
foreign countries for 5 years, it does make me want to double my efforts to give
him some amazing life experiences too.

Looking at those pictures, I can't believe what an amazing life I had.
What an amazing life I' am STILL having.