A Family Album for Many

A family album can be one of the greatest gifts to give a loved one, but it doesn’t always have to be for one person. In the case of my father-in-law’s family, the creation of a family album was for 14 siblings, their children, and their grandchildren.

I have already shared how I created an album for both my maternal and paternal grandparents, aunts and uncles. However, one of my most recent projects has been for part of my husband’s family. When I married my husband, I knew I wanted to create albums for my new family - as I know how precious it was for the families I was born into.

All the McNiff relatives that attended our wedding in 2018.

A little history…

My father-in-law is the oldest of 14 children. I didn’t have the pleasure of meeting my husband’s paternal grandparents, but I have heard so many stories and loving recollections of them since we started dating almost nine years ago. I wanted to honor them and their family in an album for my father-in-law, my husband, and our child/future children.

When I asked my father-in-law to bring over his family albums, he brought in three full boxes of albums! That’s a lot of memories and a lot of photos. I asked if any other siblings have old family photos, but I learned that only two of the 14 had old family photos to share. Some of the siblings hadn’t even seen all of the pictures that were being shared with me! This would become one of my most important projects.

Once I had gotten the album mostly completed, I reached out to the siblings asking for memories and sat down with one of the aunts carefully applying stories and background of some of the photographs. I didn’t know some of the people and stories since I had only joined the family in the last decade, so this was the first time I needed to thoroughly review the pages in advance with someone who was there.

I then wanted to add something a little extra… Of these 14 siblings, many more families have grown from my husband’s grandparents. The family has been diligent in keeping up a family directory of all the children, grandchildren, birthdays, etc. There’s almost always a new wedding or baby to celebrate and a reason to gather each year. I asked each cousin to share photos of their families. I added a page or two for each of the original 14 siblings, highlighting their children and grandchildren.

I finished this just in time for Christmas shopping and shared the link to order the book with a member of each family to gift their parents (the original 14 siblings). I’ll be honest, even though I’m the parent of a small child and was looking forward to experiencing the magic of Christmas with her this past year… I was also so eager to hear how these gifts were received. I couldn’t wait to celebrate Christmas with my father-in-law so that he could see the finished album for the first time and how this family has grown over the last 70+ years.

An album doesn’t have to just be for one person, one family, one household. We are fortunate to have the ability to create a family album for many so that memories can be shared with all the generations of one couple that started it all.