Memorial Day 2008, my husband, his adult daughter and I went to California to spend some time with family.  We had a wonderful visit, which culminated in a good, old-fashioned Italian dinner prepared by the matriarch of the family, the oldest sister.

 (just part of the family -- the blonde ones are in-laws)

After dinner, everyone had a good time looking at my deceased father-in-law's photos.

People said they would like to have copies of different photos, so I, being the good (read "foolish") person that I am,  offered to ship the photos home, scan them and distribute them to all the family.  The next day I went to the UPS Store and had them pack up and ship four albums and a lot of loose photos.

Well, during the past year I have thought about these photos a lot.  First I thought I'd have them done in time for really nice Christmas gifts.  But that didn't work.  One of the problems is that a project like this is quite time consuming.  It also takes a space dedicated to spreading it out with a scanner and a computer.  I tried doing it in our bedroom, but I couldn't stand the mess.  Then I tried the guest room, but when we had guests, I packed them away again.

Around the end of April, my sister-in-law told me that she's going to Cleveland (where they were raised) for an aunt's 90th birthday celebration in June.  Perfect!  I have a deadline.

Here's what I started with:

It may not look like that much, but it's over 500 photos.  They date from the 30s and date through the 1990s.  Here's one of my favorites -- my father and mother-in-law.  I never met her.

Saturday I spent the entire absolutely picture perfect day inside wrapping up the scanning.  Then I made a slide show (with music!).  I burned DVDs for all of the brothers and sisters and their children.  And I made a CD for each of them with the images of the photos.  Composed a little letter.  And then I got the pleasure of packing them!

All of my materials, ready to go.

I made very basic DVD jacket covers, which needed to be trimmed.

I started to pack address here, but soon realized I needed more space.

The packing station.

All my babies, ready to go.

They have all been mailed and now I'm just waiting to hear from the recipients.  I feel very good about completing this ahead of my self-imposed deadline.