Things to Do - Contemplate Life Through A Rocking Chair

(From the bottom to the top: (1) our family's original homesteading deed; (2) in the 1920s my grandfather's basketball team won the Nebraska state finals, my super-handsome grandpa is the third from the left; (3) my homemade family tree; (4) a little bit of everything - grandma as a young girl, the fading picture on the bottom left is of my great great great grandparents, the picture in the right-hand corner is one of the only pictures we have of my maternal grandparents)
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As I mentioned on Wednesday, last week I spent a lot of time rummaging through old photo albums and family histories. With the help of Grandma's notes, I managed to make a family tree going back to my great great great grandparents, with accompanying pictures. Sort of exciting to think of all the lives that came before you.



For example, see the pictures above? On the top, my father as a small child poses with his father, his paternal grandmother, and his great grandmother (Grandma Grossenbach). Though she died well before my birth, Grandma Rossenbach's rocking chair sits in my living room (her FAVORITE chair according to family history). My husband and I spent many a night sleeping/rocking/chilling on this chair when the kids were babies. And now the girls frequently use it to make forts and to climb to forbidden places. The chair has become a part of our family and, oddly, this fact makes me feel better about everything that has happened lately. The chair doesn't just exist as some random antique, rather we've incorporated it into our lives. And while my dad didn't leave me a chair, hopefully I'll manage to incorporate my father's memory into our daily life as well. When you merge the two pictures above, you have a portrait of six generations of my family, with my dad linking us all together. And that makes me happy, well, in a sad sort of way.


T took his little plastic stool that he now carries everywhere and climbed into the rocking chair while I wrote this post. You can't make this stuff up. And yes, at 20 months, he still drinks from a bottle, I've been lazy.

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND EVERYONE! I'll be back on Monday with a series of posts about our trip to Denver (taken before my father passed away), so be sure to check in! And if you have a chance, I've been nominated as a creative mom blog, so please vote for me. Here's the link - Top 25 Creative Moms - help me win! You can vote once a day!