Late for the Late One!

How many people do you know who can tell you where they were -exactly -almost on an hourly basis too, on a specific day many years ago?

Sure, those of us who were around in the 60s can usually recall where we were, what we were doing too on November 22, 1963 -the day President Kennedy was assassinated but what about some other date?

Take for example, April 6, 1967 -43 years ago. Do you know what you were doing on that date?

I do -boy, do I ever. And I can detail much of that day from about 6 a.m. until around midnight that night too.

Why?

Because that's the day my first child, my daughter, Carrie, was born!

Although I actually have a lot of photographs of her over the years, I don't have very many of her that I have on my computer -mainly cause I have yet to get around to scanning ALL those old pictures into my computer! Not because I didn't take many pictures of her over the years -far from that!

I had planned to do a post about her on her 43rd birthday but well, things just sort of got away from me and so, here I am, running a couple hours behind schedule, writing this just for her, on her big day.
Here's one of the oldest pictures I have on my computer of Carrie -taken in 1969, when she was a mere two years old. There are so many things about Carrie when she was little that I see just about every day now surfacing in Maya! Not only does Maya look almost like a clone of her aunt, she also often acts a lot like Aunt Carrie too. (Kind of scary, that stuff, ya know!)
This picture taken in 1980 at our Eld Family Reunion that year is one she may possibly go through the roof and never speak to me again for posting it, so I'm taking one big chance showing this here. Shown on the picture from left to right -Bill, Brett and Barbara Donaldson, Carrie, Mandy, me, Clate and my Mom's brother and his wife, Ralph and Hazel Eld. (Barb Donaldson is my first cousin and the only child of my Uncle Ralph.) In this picture, Carrie has on a pair of rainbow striped suspenders that she won at the reunion in one of the games for the kids and this past Christmas, Mandy found a set of suspenders like these on E-bay, I think, bought them and gave them to Carrie for a special "memory" Christmas present.
The above photo of all three of my children -Carrie, Clate and Mandy -was taken in 2001 and was the special Christmas present my kids gave me that year. I love this picture of the three of them together, especially with Carrie and Clate each having their hand on the next younger sibling. I had one other picture of the three kids together, taken when Mandy was just a baby, but unfortunately, it was damaged, the frame broke, the photo got wet and some of it stuck to the broken glass and now, we can't even find it! Carrie has been on a mission of sorts of late, trying to locate that photo and see if she can take it someplace and perhaps get it repaired and restored but so far, all the searches for it have come up empty. I don't recall the name of the studio that did that portrait of the kids -just that the photographer came to the house and posed the kids -all decked out in their finest apparel, ya know. And wouldn't you just know but it was the ONLY picture from the shots he took that was purchased because the day they brought the proofs around to pick from, I was at work and my Mom, who knew the purchase deal on those pics and also knew that we were pretty broke at the time and really couldn't afford to order a bunch of those photos, chose one pose so that we didn't have a big expense then from buying a lot of photos. (Yeah, she knew me all too well that I probably would have bought several other pics and would probably have gone into hock to pay for them too, if need be.) So that's why there's no other photos from that session available to us today -unless somehow or other, I could ever remember the name of the studio that did those pics back then. Fat chance of that happening too, ya know!)

Moving a long a few years -in 2003, this was Carrie the day she first met Maya -who was about two weeks old by then.

This picture, taken in 2005 when their Dad came to visit for a couple of days, is Clate, "Dad" and Carrie. And I really like the smile on her face in this one.
And this shot -taken at the same time as the one above, is Mandy, holding Maya, Dad, Carrie and her son, Alex -my "prince" (as you may recall that's my nickname for the older grandson.
This photo, taken in July of 2009 at the memorial service for my aunt, Isabel Hill, is of Mandy, me, grandson Alex (the Prince) and of course, his mother, Carrie.
Last but not least -and this one is I think, probably gonna be a surprise to her as it was taken by my cousin Ruth Ann at her Mom's memorial service in July of 2009 and I don't recall if I ever even showed it before to Carrie.

But this is my oldest -my firstborn -and is very much what she still looks like almost 2 years later too.

She sometimes thinks I pass over her, that I favor her brother over her and her sister and little quirks like that -something I suppose many kids tend to believe about their parents and the status they may hold within the family.

But no matter what, she's always gonna be my favorite older daughter and is number one in my book!

Care Bear -My apologies for the lateness of this post -but you, above all of you kids should appreciate the old slogan "better late than never" ya know.

Considering the fact that you were late arriving in this world -like a week overdue -and I've often said that you've been late ever since then too.

Hope you had a great birthday -and remember, Mom did bake a cake this past Saturday, just for your birthday celebration too. Right? That should count for a little something, don't 'cha think?

You're the leader of this dysfunctional pack of siblings and such -a job you didn't ask for but got it plunked in your lap anyway -to keep your siblings and yourself as tightly knit as possible now and in the future as well. So far, you've been doing a pretty darned good job with that assignment and I know you'll continue to do all within your power to see that the three of you and now, the grandkids too, are as close as close can be for each other.

Love you, my baby girl.

You sure do make your old Mom very proud -just one beautiful young woman!