



Over the last few weeks I have been busy making a few layouts of my family. My sister from German sent me this treasure trove of old pictures after my mother passed away. Many of the pictures cannot go into a regular scrapbook, first of all she want the pictures back, second they are damaged (due to a fire that destroyed our home many years ago). The best thing I could do was to scan them. Studio J is a great forum for me to put my history together at least in a little way. Share a little bit of where I come from. My mother was a very strong woman. She was born into a farmer's family with 7 other siblings. Her mom died when she was only a young girl of cancer. She never really knew her mom. As was custom, her father remarried shortly thereafter to help take care of the family. But tragedy struck again and her father passed away as well. The stepmother did not want to keep all the kids - so the children were spread all over to relatives. My mother ended up with a great aunt. She loved her to her dying days, I loved hearing stories from her. She also was the one who told my mother that one day she would find the right church. In 1957 the missionaries from the LDS taught my mother and she knew that is what my mother was waiting for. Yes, my mother was a strong woman of faith and passed it on to me. I just always hope I will be able to pass that faith and strength on to my children. Thank you mother.
Soon I will be able to work on more layouts of the rest of my family - I have lots of pictures of my father and my siblings. My father has his own set of history! You can see his grandfather up above in his "Kaiser uniform". We still had the spiked helmet when I was young. Unfortunately, we lost many of those memorabilia in our house fire.
Well, be watching for my next sharing of my pictures ... :)