Aunt Annie, But Not Pretzel Related

I went to a family reunion over the weekend, and loaded some of the old photos I've scanned over the last few years onto my iPad to show around.

The wedding photo above was the most popular picture, by far.

Aunt Annie was my maternal grandmother's sister. I knew her in her later years, obviously. She was very different from when she was younger. It wasn't just age; she had brain surgery in the early 1990s that saved her life. AND she outlived most of her siblings. She stayed lucid, but as a result, her personality changed. So I remember her as a sweet, silly, fun lady with an unforgettable laugh. The pictures above characterize her in a very different way. She's the bride in the first photo; in a dark dress in the second photo.

Anyway, some of her children, my mom's cousins, were at the reunion over the weekend. (It's become an annual event over the last few years, but that's an even longer story.) I don't think they ever saw the wedding photo. They were getting teary eyed just looking at it, so I made sure to forward copies to all of them. My grandma is in the photo, too. She's the next lady to the right of Aunt Annie.

Last night, I found a whole group of party pictures with her in them. I'm guessing it was a Christmas party that Aunt Annie and Uncle Johnny hosted a few years after their wedding. They were known for throwing big parties. I even attended a few of their ginormous family picnics when I was younger.

This photo from the set was particularly priceless. The little boy on the left scratching himself; the guy with a light bulb box on his hand; Uncle Johnny wearing a Christmas sweater, with his eldest daughter on his lap. And the expressions are somewhat candid. I love all of it.

Anyway, sharing those photos made me realize why I started digitizing them in the first place. Not only to preserve, but to share. I've been getting really burnt out on scanning lately; I've scanned more than 1,000 images since the beginning of the summer, from the late 1800s to the 1990s. (That's potentially one Time Travel Tuesday post a week for the next 19 years!) And I've scanned even more photos over the last few years. I started the project in 2012. I seem to work in spurts, but lately, I've just been wanting to get done with scanning my mom's massive collection, so I've been trying to finish an album a night.

The reunion just made me realize the hard work is worthwhile.