Monday, April 6, 2009

the beauty of facebook

i will be the first to admit i was very resistant to the idea of facebook. i did not have the time to devote to catching up with my elementary school chums that i'd lost contact with 30 years ago...skeptic that i am. i finally ended up caving when i discovered my siblings were there. i decided it would be a great way to spy on my single little sister and brother, see who they were chatting with on a regular basis. :)

like every facebook newcomer, i started getting requests for friends, which i duly accepted. in that mix of requests last week, my cousin david showed up. i don't know him very well, because he's younger than me by a bit and his family lived in AZ while we lived in UT and OH for our growing up years. i remember him vaguely, as i'm sure he remembers me just as vaguely, but he gave me a gift that makes my heart happy. he linked me to a collection of family photos that he's collected on flickr. in that collection are pictures of my mom that i've never seen before, a picture of my parents on their wedding day, a picture of the entire williams family sans my mom and dad.

Williams Family picture july 26 1970

i wondered where they were when that picture was taken. in my searching, i found that the back of the photo was also scanned, yay to whoever had the maginificent foresight to do that. this is what i found out:

Williams Family picture july 26 1970 2

they were on their honeymoon.

i thanked david for the link to the pictures, told him how happy it made me as a scrapbooker to have these pictures. i'm not sure he understood how much it means to me, but he was kind enough to acknowledge my thank you. i'm excited to get to know my cousins and aunts and uncles through this new tool i've found.

but you know what's the neatest thing? that's my grandmother's handwriting. so any scrapper out there that doesn't feel comfortable writing on your layouts, i'm telling you to do it anyway. seeing that handwriting brings her back, and i that my friend, is the beauty of facebook.

6 comments:

Tara said...

What a gift! I love finding those old photos ... and you're right ... the handwriting is just as important as the actual photo.
I've recently reconnected with a cousin over Facebook who I haven't seen since my grandmother's funeral 15 years ago. We used to spend so much time together as kids but now she lives on in another country, on the other side of the continent. For those who poo-poo Facebook (and I am one), it definately has it's benefits!

Sasha Farina said...

how precious! such a treasure to find those...

gillian said...

What a treasure that photo is! And your Grandmother's writing, to boot! Increases the value of finding the photo ten-fold, doesn't it? :)

You realize that now you have to be my Facebook Friend, too. It's only fair.

g

Houston said...

So very cool!

Kimberly said...

So totally AWESOME! xoxo :)
Loves,
K

Anonymous said...

Actually Emmy, they weren't really on their honeymoon per say... it was the day after their wedding and Grandma had instructed them to show up for the photo but mom didn't register the instructions, it was the 24th of July so I think they were probably sitting on the ledge of the Hotel Utah watching the parade go by.

Happy and utterly oblivious as most people are the day after they are wed.

love you sis!!!
-Jules