Family History, I am doing it!

I've spent the last few years feeling somewhat guilty every time I go to the Temple and don't have my own family members' names. I've done some research, but the only side that doesn't go back 29 generations ends with my great-great grandfather, John T Smith, who was born in Georgia in around 1820.

Well, I'm done feeling guilty. Now is not really the season of my life to spend hours at the family history library, or paying lots of money for an ancestry.com membership. So I'm taking another approach: digitizing old photos and making photo books out of them.

I came accross this photo:

Doesn't it look like someone hid a camera just to see what our family, neatly polished and sitting quietly in church every Sunday, REALLY looked like? I can imagine the scene: my older brother late for the bus to take him to first grade, Jewls & I just playing, perhaps making a mess, and baby Whit may have kept mom up all night. At any rate, I was comforted by this picture and the reminder it carries that I'm not the only young mother who is often frazzled and just plain worn out. I draw strength from my own mother and recognize her sacrifice.
This pictures reminds me of how I always want to look at my children.

Isn't family history wonderful?