Nov 1: Everything happens for a reason, right?

This is the first entry (hopefully of many) suggested by Esther Kretowicz of ScrapbookingPizzaz@yahoogroups.com.

Today's topic... everything happens for a reason. (or East meets West!)

West As a senior in high school (1970-1971), I was anxiously preparing to attend college. My career path was education. Since the third grade, I'd known I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to attend a teacher's college where I would be away from family for the first time in my life. (Well except for sleepover, field trips and scout camps!)

I took all of the college entrance tests, carefully completing all of the paperwork required. I requested that my test scores be sent to the teacher's college, another small school, and the University of Alabama. I lived 7 miles from the U of A campus, and I really wanted to be living on campus, but couldn't justify the added expense since I could easily commute daily.

Anxiously awaiting my acceptance letters, May, June, & July to mid August pass. I knew that I should have been accepted at one of the schools, classmates with lower gpa and class standings had received their letters! Fearing the worst, my mom contacted a friend of hers who worked for the Admissions department at Alabama. Apparently, my name had been misentered on the test results sent to the schools.

By now, it was too late to start school at my chosen schools (quarter system instead of semester)
I rushed into CLEP exams and final registrations at Alabama that weekend, starting school there on Monday. One of the requirements to exit registration was that I MUST have a full class load of 16 hours (didn't realize that it was the counselors requirements and not a school wide one). As a result, I was looking for any thing that I could take to fill the requirements with everything being filled already. I was able to get my basic math and English courses, but nothing else. In an effort to fill my hours, I was talked into a senior level Geography course (for geography majors) but still needed 4 hours of coursework to escape! I recognized the head of the Computer Science Department and he suggested that I might take the Honors computer program. Yippee.. only one more hour to grab...

I'd been in band in high school, but had planned to not participate even though I'd been heavily recruited for the band.. I figured that I'd already missed out on a lot of practices... anyway, I drifted over to the music table and found that I could still be in band.. A quick call to my parents, and I was set. 16 hours and I could start classes on Monday.

EAST Tom was an honors student from East Alabama. His family lived about an hour away from Auburn. Easily most of the graduates from his school attending college would go there instead of Alabama (a four hour drive away). However, Tom was from a family who were gung ho Alabama fans. There was no option but that he would go there. He too signed up for Computer Science Honors classes AND Band. He played Tuba.

EAST MEETS WEST About 2 weeks into classes, the instructor didn't show up, so the ten to twenty of us sat in the classroom and started chatting waiting for Henry to show up. Tom & I were sitting on the same side of the class, with only a row of seats between us. We started chatting and eventually found that we had the same class (band). We started talking a lot between classes, and eventually started dating.

As he says when asked how we met..
"She had a car, I had a tuba.. it was a match made in Heaven"

Now... had there not been a mix up with the name on my test results, had I registered earlier and not gotten into the "dregs" of classes, had not the BOE class I was in as a senior (another oddity) taken a field trip to the Computer Science lab where I met the director, had I stuck to my guns and not taken band, had Tom not taken band or Computer Science Honors or gone to Alabama, I would likely not have met my husband to whom I've been married since Dec 74!

Journal Challenge

Today begins a challenge posted on a scrapbooking group I follow. Each day for the month of November, the hostess will post a journal topic, and we will journal about that topic.

Scrapbooking to create a history

My favorite thing about scrapbooking is that you can tell the stories of your life, or the lives of family members in a beautiful way that will bring back beautiful memories.

Growing up, I remember my grandmother telling me that she'd had three fathers.. For a girl growing up at the turn of the century.. or pre-depression years, having three fathers was unusual..

Her father had been a miner in South-eastern Kansas. By the time Velma was born, he'd become ill and it was recommended that he move the family to Arizona to try to improve his health. Unfortunately, he died by 1916 and Velma was only 3.. she never really knew John Budd.

By 1920, her mother had remarried, this time to Frank Olin Hermance, a man who thought that by marrying a woman with several children, he'd be exempt from military service. This wasn't the case..

Whether he died or they divorced is uncertain, but by 1930, she'd married James E. Lewis. They had several children, and all of the children loved him. He was the "daddy" that they hadn't had.

To commerate this man in my album, I created a layout with one page being an 8x10 photo mounted on 12x12 paper, and a journaling page accompanying it.