I love looking at old photos

I would often pull down our family albums from our childhood when I still lived with my parents. I still enjoy to flip through them from time to time. And now that I have the scanner, I plan to digitize some of the old photos and slides and clean them up. All I need is a plan of action because there are a million slides and photos to scan!

Now instead of flipping through albums, I'm clicking through digital photos. I figure I started taking digital photos about 3 1/2 years ago when my dad bought his first Canon G2 camera. I find that totally amazing because it feels like we've been using digital for much longer than that, and I already have amassed hundreds of photos!

I was flipping through the set we took on our vacation to New Brunswick in July 2006. And memories came flooding back.... Abby was 11 months old, and had a terrible time sleeping that week, so it was brutal in those regards (otherwise it was great - weather, food, beach etc)!! I remember she was sleeping in the playpen and each night she would sleep less and less, waking up earlier and earlier and not going back to sleep. We would put her in the stroller and walk her around in circles, we even loaded her into the car and drove for miles to Jacket River at 1:00 am. If it was today, I think I would have just let her cry it out, but back then we were suffering from first child syndrome, and we also didn't want to disturb the others in the house at the time. Finally, near the end of the week, I couldn't take it any longer and I just wanted to go home, so we packed the car and were going to leave for home the first moment Abby woke up. I was prepared to leave at midnight if we had to and drive the 12 hours home! All I wanted was to get home so she would sleep and then we could sleep!!
The car was packed up with all of our stuff, gassed up and ready to go... and what happened... she slept the whole night. As it turns out Gail, my mother in law, suggested that maybe the bottom of the playpen was too hard, and that we could try laying a blanket down to soften it up... duh!! How could I have been so dumb!! The playpen was rock hard, so no wonder she didn't want to sleep, she was miserable! Another note taken for our parenting manual as a lesson learned...

The Culligan Home
A great photo of Eric!
Playing on the pebble beach
Abby would love this now!
On the Bay de Chaleur

It's amazing how photos capture the moments and almost create memories for us. We all seemed so normal and happy in these photos, but they sure don't convey the complete sleep deprivation we were all suffering. I'm not sure I know how to take a picture of that...