Family Families and more Familiest stuff

This is my paternal grandparents Benoit and Amanda Cloutier. This was taken at their 25th anniversary
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These are my maternal grandparents Albert and Clara Provencal. My mother is at the back row 2nd from the right.

This was taken July 1989 the weekend we moved to BC. It was a reunion for my dad's side of the family. The next year he died.

This is my maternal grandmother's family reunion in the summer of 1987. I had missed this one as Keith had just gotten off a 9 month strike and we could barely put food on the table even with 2 jobs each.


THis was the beginning of our new family. A culmination of all the hard work in the pictures above. THAT is what I am going to pass down to my descendants. Now I know had my dear freind Carm would see what is passing off as scrapbppked pages she would be screaming into the sunset!!!! lol

This has to be by far the MOST hectic and emotional, mental and spiritual roller coaster I have ever been on in regards to anything with my family. It started on the wrong foot a couple of weeks ago when I went to set the VCR to tape something I wasn't going to be home to watch and so I pop the tape in. As I am setting the VCR, my brain catches up with my eyeballs at what I saw on the tape and ejected it. When I have blank tapes I mark them blank and use them for day to day taping of things. Anything that needs to be saved gets a locked tab and is clearly marked. Well this was clearly marked "Christmas 1997" and "Summer 2000". Now anyone that knows me knows how much my videos of my family get together means to me. Especially the summer of 2000 as the was the summer after my sister died and ALL of us siblings AND all of our children went home to mom's to recuperate. I was so hoping that I had just grabbed it by error and there was nothing on it but family but no such luck. It was all gone :(

I have been working on going through this large box of pictures I got from my mom and that has hit me so hard. Pictures of family get together at my grandparents farm with all my family, all the memories made it hard to keep emotions in check knowing there would be no more going back to either of my grandparents farms as all of them have died.

Every picture had a memory and I could only work on a few at a time scanning them as it was too much sensory overload. She also had given me another box of negatives so took those in to be developed. One batch was from a family reunion in 1989 of my Dad's family and to celebrate his mom's 80th birthday! We weren't there as it was the same weekend we were moving to BC. So that was hard to deal with.

I have been working on personal history last couple of weeks working on our family story for the book I want to write. Writing down every memory I have ever had of my ancestors, every story I was ever told. I remember sitting at my grandmothers table having tea as they told stories of the "good old days"

I have been using the month of October as Family History Month which it has been and I have been using a different theme each week and doing a big display for it. My camera isn't very good but I will post some pictures of the display. This week is the final week and I am going to show how writing your history isn't just about writing in your journal "Tuesday 8:15 I swept and washed the kitchen floor again". It's about bridging the history from your ancestors to your descendants.

I have to teach in Relief Society as well as my regular family history class on Sunday and I have been struggling with my projects. Not that the projects are difficult to do. The opposite. When I'm busy doing that it takes my mind off my pain lemels and what I CAN'T do. But it brought up huge amounts of emotions.. things I had forgotten about, things I did not want to every remember and things I will never again be a part of. For someone whose whole life is family oriented it has been a rough last 2 weeks.