I: The Way My Story Goes

I love photographs. Anyone who was my friend in high school knows that as soon as I got my first digital camera, I started taking approx. 3 billion pictures a day. Unfortunately, someone broke my camera and wouldn't admit it, and I never got a new one. (Which is probably good, as it reduced the number of terrible pictures existing in the world by about 3 billion a day...)

So anyway, even more than taking photographs of myself my friends, I love looking at old photographs. From the big box of photographs in my mom's closet, I pulled out some of my favorites to share with the world. Since I found so many, I'm going to do two entries: one with photos of my great-grandparents, grandparents and parents, and one with me and my siblings.

Great-Grandparents

Unfortunately, I only found one photo of my family from three generations back, and it's only of my great-grandfather (sorry great-grandmother!)

This is actually the first and only photo I've seen of my great-grandfather. I asked my mother who was in the photo so I could do this blog entry and she told me who it was. This reminds me that after you die, only a few generations go by before someone in your family can look at a photo of you and not know who you are.

Anyway, here are lots of photos of my grandparents!

Grandparents

Here is a photograph of both of my grandparents.

What a cute couple! Although I don't know too much about their early lives together, there are many pictures of them in front of this house/apt, so I assume they lived here once.

Look! My grandma is playing the cello!

My mom says that this is more of a posed shot than a candid, but I pretend granny loved playing the cello and this somehow influenced me. Whether she really played cello or not, my grandfather's music genes must have been transferred to me! He played guitar (for real).

He was a really good guitar player and I remember seeing him when I was young and he would often play guitar and sing. He even was a famous celebrity played at a radio station.

Guess I'm not the first person in my family to strive for fame....

My favorite picture of my grandfather actually shows him holding a guitar:

When he wasn't playing guitar, he was fighting in wars.

There is a HUGE photo on my living room wall of my grandfather and his five brothers, all in uniform. They went to various wars and all came back safely.

While my grandfather was fighting in wars, my grandmother was getting ready to set sail on the Titanic.

Just kidding. (How awesome would it be to have a photo of my grandmother standing next to the Titanic?)

Well, eventually they started having kids. Here's a photo of my grandparents with one of my aunts.

And here is another, similar photo, except this one features Eric Mabius on the left (?!)

So before we move onto my parents, here is my favorite pictures of my grandparents.


Parents

One day, my mom was born.

Then she went to school (feat. her teacher, Ms. Hernandez)

When I saw this photo for the first time, I pointed out how there was only one black girl in the whole class. And my mom said, "That was my best friend!" Good job embracing all cultures Mom!

Here is my mom's senior picture.

I guess she didn't pass the "taking good senior portraits" gene on to me......

Here's another high school pic. She's about to go to a dance with some dude who apparently became my uncle or something?! Confusing.

The box of photographs I found mostly were very old so there aren't many pics of my parents. Luckily, the small number of pictures is made up with the sheer awesomeness of the one photo I did find, which shows my father is a most glamourous light.

Look at those short-shorts and that modelesque head-tilt! How glam.

So after many years of giving birth to a bunch of brats, my mother finally hit the jackpot and gave birth to me. Here I am during my baptism, being held by my godparents Aunt Susie and Uncle Jimmy.

PART II FORTHCOMING