Goodness...

Both this and the school class photo feature.
With thanks to Anvilcloud for cleaning them up. 

Well, my 'probably' yesterday turned out to be correct. There were i's to be dotted, t's to be crossed and s's to be squiggled. But not only that: I had missed a story! I had been wondering where it had gone and it turned out, it had never arrived at its rightful chapter. And then last night when I was in bed, I realised I had another story with first hand information and a lot of photos. So, guess what I did first thing this morning?

But, as of this afternoon: 99 pages and it is done. Dusted. Ready. Finished. As long as I don't look at it too much, because I am sure to find something else to add. However, there is the small matter of another book to finish, this time the one of my mother's side. For some reason though, her family is higgledy piggledy all the way, starting with names and continuing in everything else. However, even this book already has already 52 pages and there are some things I still want to add. The reason it is smaller is that on my father's side I have used the contemporary stories of living family members, whereas on my mother's side, I will not be doing that. 

Anyhoo, Madi's Mum Cecilia once asked me which side was my favourite, story wise. Well...

There is of course the Royal Connection on my Mum's side. Being descended from the first King of Belgium is nothing to turn away from you know! But then there is the soldier who died in a Japanese PoW-camp while working on the infamous Birma railway on my Dad's side. 

There is the story of my grandmother finding food during the World War II on my Mum's side. And there is the letter from an ancestor to another ancestor on my Dad's side. 

My maternal grandmother (my Oma) doing something with fruit

There is the man who got killed by a priest on my Mum's side. And there is the man who (allegedly) killed someone in Orléans (France) on my Dad's side. Unfortunately I have not been able to find anything more on that, so he does not feature in the book. Perhaps for part 2?

On both sides there are too many stories (really too many) about women giving birth to children and then those children not making it past their fifth birthday, in many cases not even past their first. I've found one unwed mother on either side. Poverty and riches on both sides as well. 

So, overall I can say that both sides are equally interesting. Just for completely different reasons!