What I've been up to...
...the big reveal

I spent the majority of December working on a custom-made photo album for dad.

It started with a search on Flickr for "Laushway", one day in September when I was bored. Among the hits was a vintage photo of Thomas Laushway, posted by a user who — as it turns out — is the great-grandaughter of my great-aunt. For those not keeping score, that means there's a one-generation-sized generation gap between us. Such are the intracacies of having 17 children descend from you: your great-niece is a contemporary of your granddaughter.

After a bit of online correspondence, she and I were contacted by a relative whose hobby is to compile as complete a family history as possible. She provided me with an image of my grandfather with his first wife (not my dad's mom).

Around this time, my always-lovely-and-charming Aunt Rita sent along a bunch of her old photos just because she's in the habit of decluttering her place, these days.

After that, I couldn't help but believe the time was right to collect the images I'd been given into something useful — a pictoral family history record.

With mom's help smuggling photos out of the house, and Matt and Caty's contributions in helping me not go completely insane from the amount of work undertaken, I succeeded in finishing this project off before I felt really pressured for time.

The first 42 images found here, at my Vintage Family Photos Photoset on Flickr — complete with annotation — are the fruits of my labour (she says, dramatically).