A few layouts with me and my family

When my ex-husband and I divorced, we agreed he'd keep the photo albums for our son, who stayed with him to finish his senior year of high school. It seemed reasonable at the time as I was moving back in with my parents until I could find my own place and didn't have a lot of room. I took my son's baby book to keep, only later realizing how few photos it contained. Nearly twenty-five years of my life sort of disappeared. I mention this to explain the layout below.

When I saw Carol Burns' "Coffee Break" I knew I wanted to do something about my grad school days at Virginia Commonwealth University. When the layout was all but complete, I realized I didn't have any photos from that time! However, my ex-husband had just loaned me our old albums to scan so I went searching through them. Had to extract me from a photo around that time and play with VCU symbols to cover over what was missing but I think it turned out pretty well. You can't read the layout very well here but the notepaper reads: Secrets to surviving graduate school:
Always take a cup of coffee with you when you have to teach 8 o'clock classes
For grading papers late at night, have coffee and chocolate ready,; glance through quickly and put the worst on top to do first.
If no one shows up for office hours, take a coffee break with a friend
Keep emergency chocolate in the office (but hide it from your office mate)

I actually prefer tea to coffee but coffee was more readily available on campus. Four days of the week, I'd leave home at 7 am to teach 8am classes, then rush to my own classes, get a couple hours to rush home and see to my son, fix the family dinner, rush back to campus several nights at week for eveing classes, rush home to study and grade student papers often 'til 2am, then back up again. Fridays were a lighter day class wise so I crammed study and research time and chores in then. Friday night I crashed and was allowed to sleep in until 10:30. Looking back it's hard to believe that in my thirties I survived two graduate programs while teaching and managing family responsibilites! I was tough but I sure loved it and really miss teaching.

Here's Carol Burns' "Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend" kit again. The two couples seen below are really the same - me and my husband. The first photo taken when we dated in high school (we graduated in 1969). It's not a very good photo of John who was tall, dark, and handsome. He was 6'4" tall and clearly Italian (first generation It.Amer. on father's side, several generations in SicilianAmer. on mother's side). I was 5'6" tall and incredibly skinny. I weighed just 86 lbs. in this photo (& no, I was not anorexic or anything like that), pale in comparison (English & Irish background). People always commented on the contrast.
The next photo was taken in 1995 when we got back together again. John's still handsome but has put on some weight. I'm not longer skinny but a normal size (pre fibro!). In love again, we were practically sparkling that day at the German Diner.

This layout was created using Pyna's "Serenity" kit. Find it here:
http://www.scrapbookersplayground.com/Cart/index.php?main_page=product_scrapbook_info&products_id=6796

This is several years after the photo above. We married in 1996 and about a year later his daughter married. Her son, Tyler Reid Caron, was born October 27, 1998 - our first grandchild. This is Tyler's proud Papa holding him when he was 3 days old. I wish I'd taken better photos so you could see John's expression. He loves children and was overjoyed with his grandson. Still is.

This layout, also made with "Serenity" shows a casual pose of my son taken in 1996 along with his graduation photo. This is typical Jeremy with T-shirt and flannel shirt topper.

That's all the family layouts for the moment.