I was so surprised and excited when Misty Cotton emailed me the other day, telling me that she actually recognized the beach!  It is the pier at Oceanside, California.  And that’s not all, she actually went down to the pier and took pictures for me!!  What a sweetheart!

It’s so neat to look at the pictures and see what changes have been made since the first picture was taken. The arches were enclosed, the lamps changed, and some new areas have been built up.  The pier itself looks the same though!

I still don’t know who the women are, but I now know where the picture was taken.  Part of the mystery is solved.  Thank you Misty!

When I was scanning negatives a couple of weeks ago, I was surprised and a little startled when this showed up on the screen.  My grandpa Don, 2 of the same woman, and a ferris wheel.  It makes for a very strange picture.   I wonder who she is and where they were!  Maybe at the state fair.

I pulled out a box of negatives – many of which I’ve never seen the pictures to.  They are a larger format than my scanner takes (it is made for 35mm film), but I was able to fit them in anyway.  The only problem is that I can’t scan the entire picture in at one time.  It’s fine as long as the picture isn’t a close up and there isn’t anything important around the edges.

I have noticed that I seem to scan them in upside down about 75% of the time.  All of the letters/numbers in my pictures are backwards.  I suppose I should take my time and do it again the correct way.  Now that I own the scanner, I can do that.  I was just too excited to take my time this scanning session.  I wanted to see what I had!

I just wanted to cry when I saw some of these pictures though.  Like this one of my grandfather:

And this one of my grandmother:

I’ll be sharing more of my great finds over the coming weeks!

Why wait?  If you didn’t know it already, I can be very impatient.

Later I’ll write a post on the model I bought and what I think of it.  I had it up and running very quickly.

And I have been finding such great pictures amongst these piles of slides.  Stuff I haven’t seen in years.  Stuff I had forgotten.

Like my 2nd birthday party, complete with Bert & Ernie cake.

Or my 3rd.  Gotta love Snoopy.

Or my 8th with a Care Bear cake.  I’m rockin’ that side ponytail.  Love the jelly bracelets all the way up my arm too.

I even found an embarrassing one of me powdering our entire bathroom.

And a great one of my brother!

And here is my other brother with a giant zucchini!

I am having so much fun!!!

This was amongst his pictures and I’m having a hard time trying to figure out what is going on – or if there just isn’t really a point to the pictures.  Are those Coast Guard uniforms?  Is that ice on the deck for goodness sakes?  Brrrr!

And here is another, similar picture.

I am treasuring the plastic bag full of slides I brought home from my mom’s house this past August.  Apparently, they were much cheaper than getting pictures printed out and so for a number of years, when my mom had film developed, she ordered slides instead of prints.

This has resulted in me missing out on huge chunks of childhood pictures, because really – who pulls out a slide projector and watches slide shows on the wall?  Does anyone still own one of these that actually works?  My mom still had all of the slides in carousels, but the projector was toast.

Anyway, my job is to buy a slide scanner and get all of these images digitized so that we can actually enjoy them!!

I am thinking that it might be what I ask Santa for Christmas this year.

Have any of you all had success in converting your slides to digital images?  Any suggestions on which scanner to buy – or which one to stay away from?

It was neat to see that she was a “library clerk”

and an “auditorium clerk”.

I’m excited to do some more searching in this database to see what I might find!!

Here they are at prom – yes they were high school sweethearts.  I came along 5 years later.

Another picture that I am not sure of.  Who are they?  When and where was it taken?  I really wish that they had been labeled…

They have some pretty big fish there!

This picture belonged to my grandfather, Donald Sanchez, who served in the Coast Guard.

I am not sure if he is in this picture or not.  It wasn’t labeled and it’s hard to ID anyone from their back.

I am curious as to what on earth they are doing.  It looks like the truck was maybe transported across two small boats.  Seems very odd to me.

And yet I find myself making the exact same mistakes.  Do I go through and label all of my pictures?  It seems silly to label my children or my aunts and uncles, whom I obviously know and will never forget.  But I have to remind myself that someday my great-grandchildren might be going through my pictures and wondering who on earth these people are.

I have decided that I need to take the time to sit down and label them – both digital and print – so that future generations can identify them.

We do have a great advantage with the digital age though – I love that the date is automatically part of the photo’s properties.

Here is one of my many unidentified pictures, of a couple of Norwegian kids.  I have no idea when it was taken, or who they are. In seeing my own shortcomings, I think that I have finally forgiven my ancestors for not having labeled their pictures.  I’m sure that they never imagined that I would be wondering and wishing I knew who these people were.