A Christmas Present for Dad

We invited my Dad to spend Christmas with us this year. He had requested my help on a project earlier in the year. The project was costing a bit more than I had expected, so I decided that the project would be our Christmas present to him.

I think it was last year at Christmas, when my Dad gave me all of his photo slides and asked for my help in scanning them. My parents had purchased a scanner that was supposed to do the job, so I took that with me. Well, the scanner wasn't really designed to copy the slides. There were other models of the same brand that could do it, but not the one that they had purchased.

A lot happened after I committed to taking on this project. My father in law died, then my mother died, then we bought a new house & moved. Sometime in November I started looking at reviews online for equipment that could convert the slides to digital images. I finally settled on the Wolverine F2D14. I was all set to purchase it when the price jumped up $30! Finally, the week of Christmas, I went ahead & purchased it.


This is about half of Dad's slide collection.

Here's the Wolverine slide converter that I purchased.

It came with 2 trays - one for negatives and one for slides. I ended up ordering an extra set of 3 slide trays to speed up the process.

We used compressed air to spray the slides before scanning them to help get rid of the dust.

The Wolverine machine was super easy to use! Within a few days, we had converted over 1000 of Dad's slides. We still have at least another 1000 to go, but Dad's not in any hurry. He hasn't seen any of these in 40 plus years, so what's another few weeks or months?

I enjoyed looking through all the old pictures with Dad. After we converted them to digital, we sorted them into different categories. Dad narrated a lot of the pictures as we were looking through them.

I thought I would share some.

Here's a picture of my mom from college.

Dad at his graduation from IU.

My young Dad (on the right) with his cousin John (left) and brother Ken (center.)

These are "Cousin Roy, Cousin Dorothy, & Cousin Turpin". Dorothy & Turpin were my paternal Grandmother's cousins. Roy was Dorothy's husband. Dorothy was the one who told my father about this nice little town north of Indianapolis called Carmel. Dorothy died in 1991, shortly after Chris & I got married. She was in a nursing home at that time. We actually had the limo make a detour on the way to the reception so we could go say hi to her. We didn't have much time because we only rented the limo for an hour, so Chris & I were literally running through the nursing home in our wedding attire to see her.

Here's a picture of mom. I really liked her hair in this one. It's the longest I've seen of her in her adult years. Plus, her shoes were kind of stylish. Not too fond of her dress though!

Here is a picture of my Dad's side of the family. Front row is Dad's cousin David and his wife, then a happy mom in the center and Dad. The back row is Uncle Benson, Aunt Annie Laurie, Aunt Willa, Uncle Oscar, Grandpa Swain, Aunt Helen, and Grandma Swain.

These are my Grandparents, Huber & Mary Eunice Swain. Grandma just opened a present sometime in this early 1960's picture. It was a glass candy dish. It is one of the few things I got after she died.

My parents hosted a 40th anniversary party for my grandparents in 1969.

Here is a picture of me! Grandma Robbins is on the left, then mom, Grandma Swain, me and Grandpa Swain. Mom was pregnant with my brother George.

I LOVE this picture of me with my grandparents. (except for my blurring arm which looks missing).

I only had 2 or 3 birthday parties when I was a child. This is a picture of my 6 year old party. (I'm turning 46 this week!!!)  Let's see if I can remember everyone! From left to right: Marcia, Me, Stephanie, Michelle, Stacy, Kristen, & Mary Lynn.

In this picture we have Grandma Swain who is holding my cousin Katherine, Mom, Aunt Brenda, and me. Katherine is about 15 months younger than me. She was born a couple of weeks before George.

Here's a picture of all of my grandparents. Mom's parents on the left, Dad's on the right.

Here is Mom & Dad at their 1st wedding anniversary.

 

Here's a cute picture of my sister, Bethany. 

 

 

 

Here's a family picture. Now over the Christmas holidays, we watched the Sound of Music. Don't you think those drapes would make great play clothes?????

As I said, I still have about 1000 slides to convert. Those are all of Dad's pictures from his days in the Army.