Then and Now

Today's focus with the Summer Blog Challenge is looking at pictures from then and now. The only picture that I have in the house of me when I was young, is the one of me holding a teddy bear when I was one year old.


I don't have many pictures of me as a baby. My Dad took slides so there are more slides than pictures. 


When I was in college, I made a photo album for my Dad that had pictures of him and me together (these were photos I made from the slides). I also made one for my Mom that had pictures of her and me together. Interspersed with the pictures, were memories I wrote about each one. Both of those albums are at my mom's home.

1967 - when I was 1 year old.

From that baby picture, we jump all the way to the 1980s - when I was in senior high school. These were the times when traditional 35mm cameras were used with film that had to be developed. Consequently, pictures were still far and few between because film cost money as did developing.

This was taken some time during the 1980s.

I'm in the front row on the far left (in the purple sweater).

My sister is in the turquoise pants and my brother is in the turquoise top.

My Mom is next to my sister and brother; and 

my Dad is the second from the right in the back row.

We are standing with family friends who we've known since the 1960s.

Growing up in a one-income household meant that film was not wasted. Come to think about it...I don't even think my parents took pictures of us kids on our birthdays (maybe a photo every so often, but certainly not every year).

When I was going through photo albums earlier this year and removing photographs from them (these were the kind of albums that destroy pictures...not the archival-safe/photo-safe albums available these days), I scanned a few photos and uploaded them to my Flickr site.

These were a couple that were from a trip to Australia in the mid-1990s (I think either 1995 or 1996). Holding the koala was a memorable experience. The koala was so relaxed it started to tighten its little paws around my arm like I was a eucalyptus tree. It was planning on falling asleep, the sanctuary employee said.

The koala in my arms 

just before it started to doze off.

After that experience, I had an opportunity to feed kangaroos. Let me assure you that feeding kangaroos is not the same calming experience as is holding a koala. Far from it.

See that rather tall kangaroo...that one on the right side of the picture standing almost chin-level with me?

Apparently it didn't want the one to its left nor those little ones coming up behind it to get any food. Nor did it want the couple dozen of kangaroos jumping down hill toward me (not pictured...but vividly etched in my memory) to have any food.

In its greediness, it went for the bag of food - and my arm - leaving nice scratch marks on it. I didn't spent too much time in that part of the sanctuary.

To give kangaroos credit, there were some very tame, friendly ones that allowed me to get up very close to them - and these were moms with joeys in their pouches. Now that was a positive kangaroo memory.

Skipping forward almost a decade, I have a picture of Sophia and Olivia when they were very young - almost 3 and exactly 10 months old. This was taken on Olivia's adoption day in the government office in her province in China.

All the babies from her orphanage were dressed in matching pink and yellow outfits. (There were five babies from that orphanage.) There was another one or two orphanages who were there as well bringing babies to their adoptive families.

Sophia and Olivia with me on Olivia's adoption day.

November 18, 2003

Six years later, with the girls older and able to walk on their own, we enjoyed going on walks with the dogs, especially at a local state park. Sophia now has learned how to use a camera - a digital one - so we now can start taking lots of pictures, and deleting ones we don't like.

Sophia took this picture of me with 

Montague and Gretel as we walked at the park.

The St. Croix River is behind us.

It separates Minnesota from Wisconsin.

(Taken on April 14, 2009.)

One of my favorite pictures of the girls and me was after eating dinner at a Chinese restaurant for Olivia's 7th adoption day celebration. We're all wearing red (or a shade of it) because red symbolizes good luck and fortune in China.

Sophia, Olivia, and me - 7 years later 

(see photo above for what we looked like 7 years ago)

November 17, 2010

One of the most recent photos I have of myself was taken on Easter this year. It is of my mom, her children (my sister, brother, and me), and grandchildren (nine of them).

I'm in the far back row on the left hand side.

My sister, brother, and I are standing on the couch

so we could all could get in the picture.

My mom is wearing an Easter bonnet that she made.

As I look back at these pictures, the only one I didn't have bangs in was when I was an infant. (Though I think, from school pictures, there are a few years in the elementary and early junior high time period when I had no bangs - just straight hair - as was the style back in the 1970s/early 1980s).