In My 31st Year

I presented my project on my family's diaries and letters... and 50 people attended!

It really could not have gone any better. So many beautiful things clicked into place.

The night before, I found out that a Packard descendant from California was out here in Massachusetts, heard about my talk from a friend, and then changed his flight plans so he could attend! His great grandfather and my great, great grandfather are the same- Edward Packard- and that was who I focused my presentation on.

Not only was that a joy in itself- another Packard descendant was joining us- but he also was completely interested in the family history. That's not always a given! Because of his attendance, I was able to say that out of Edward Packard's 8 children, 5 of them had gone on to have children and grandchildren. Out of those 5, 4 were represented in the audience that night! I couldn't have been happier.

The other surprise was this: in the 1900 diary, it mentioned the whole family going up to the center of town to listen to a graphaphone. The President of our Historical Society mentioned to me that he might know who the graphaphone had belonged to. I mentioned it to that family- not only did they confirm that fact, they brought the actual graphaphone to my presentation!

I was blown away.

While I felt a huge relief at having completed this project, part of me wondered: Well, what now?

I knew the answer all along though. It's time to get back to tackling smaller projects, and return to things like this- blogging- that I enjoy so much! My Packard Papers project was a labor of love, and while I enjoyed it immensely, I look forward to a little more normalcy around here and a little less of me holing up in the spare bedroom trying to put a presentation together.

I have a lot I want to write about on here.

Acceptance

I've come to accept a few things in the past week or so:

1. My house will look like a disaster area, no matter how many times it's picked up and cleaned, for the foreseeable future. We have little munchkins with big imaginations. I'd rather a cluttered, happy house than a pristine, unhappy one.

2. Speaking of little munchkins, they are most definitely the best of friends and the worst of enemies. Some days they play together splendidly, other days I'm ready to get the wine out before 5pm.

3. I actually like a few hot days sprinkled throughout the summer. You know, the kind that barely appeared this year? They're kind of fun in their own way (and maybe a nice excuse to lay low instead of taking on the world every single nice weather day).

4. This is the last year of me being a full stay at home mom. Next September, Rosie will enter Kindergarten, and Buddy will begin Preschool part-time. When did this come on the radar?

5. This blog will be pretty quiet until I wrap up my presentation for the Historical Society, which is on Friday, September 19th at 7pm in the Goshen Town Hall! Anyone and everyone is welcome to attend! I'm using most all of my (little) free time to work on this program about life in Goshen circa 1895, based off the diaries and letters my ancestors left behind. Wish me luck!