My still stunningly beautiful mother, Maxine, is incredibly well and an active senior citizen. She participates in many charities including Meals on Wheels and Cancer Pads and is active in all of her church functions. She still drives a car. Since her recent cataract surgery she doesn't even need to wear glasses!

Last year when I went 'home' for Thanksgiving my mother asked me, her oldest daughter of eight children, to give her a birthday party in her part of the country; Detroit, Michigan. Of course I said "yes" especially since it was a landmark birthday: her 80th. I had five months to plan the event from here in St. Mary's County.
Now-a-days most party preparations can be done long distance or on the internet but her photoalbums came home on the plane with me. Some of them were artifacts she inherited from the early 1900s but she continued photographing her family life for all of her 79.5 years. Some of the photos in the album were damaged or faded, even torn and water-stained. I decided they all needed to be scanned and repaired. That was the beginning of THE PROJECT.
I purchased Adobe Photo Elements 7.0 and began learning "by-the-seat-of my-pants" and with the help of my library boss, Carol Morris, and Media Service dude Andy Keiper. I managed to scan all 1200 photos and produce 9 complete photoalbums. One was the antique photos of her family before she was born. Each of the other eight represented my mother's life, one decade for each of her eight decades.
This Digital Photography class would have been so useful for that project. Truth is, it still will be. There were many photos I did not have the skill to repair or improve. After completing the first set of tutorials I am already better equipped to handle THE PROJECT, as it will never end. The damaged pictures can still be repaired for my mother (and my) enjoyment. Her new decade began with pictures of her birthday, kicking off her new 9th decade.

During all this photo work. I asked my mom if she had any wedding pictures. She was really unhappy that nobody had brought a camera to her wedding in front of a Justice of the Peace.

"But", she said, " I do have a picture of me wearing the dress I got married in and your dad holding my shoulders. Can you make that into a wedding picture for me?"

What can you say to your 79.75 year old mother? I said I would try. Here is a copy of the album page with the newspaper article cut out she wanted made into her wedding picture. My mother and father are the little tiny people in the middle of the group. She did not want anyone else in the picture.

A lot of help, much 'lassoing' and 50 resolutions later, the wedding picture was complete. I was short one copy when I went home and gave my hard copy away. When I locate the final product I will post it or perhaps have Prof. Billy show me how to get it out of Adobe, but that "wedding picture" was the best gift I gave her. It filled a hole in her heart she had been wearing for 60 years!