It was Keryn's birthday yesterday, and that can only mean one thing- it's MY birthday today!No, we weren't born ten minutes apart around midnight; the whole story is here in this post of Keryn's.

We were telling this story to a local lady this week, and I mentioned the midwives who made sure I arived safe and sound, among them Sister Lewis who I wrote about in this post. It made me sad when I found out she'd died three months ago, in her late nineties.

To illustrate this post I decided to find a photo of us on our second birthday, so I turned the cupboards upside down looking for it. I thought I'd sorted things out pretty well but I must have done some rummaging before and not bothered to put the photos back in order because I couldn't find it. I could only unearth this one of Keryn with the Dolly Varden cake, and I know it's Keryn because she got a red doll and mine was pale blue.

However in the search I came across a small envelope with tiny pictures in it; these are about an inch across. Back in those days when developing was such an expensive business they printed tiny little samples and you chose the ones you wanted to have done fullsize. Some of these I had never seen before, and I got my magnifier (meant to view stamps I think) and pored over them quite fascinated.

Keryn and I have always loved looking at our family photos, and most of them are familiar and well-known. Quite often when we were growing up we'd beg to go through them and Mum would pull out the large brown suitcase so we could stare at the sepia and grey images jumbled inside. We loved hearing the stories about long-dead relatives;looking at strange little children who were now our uncles and aunties, and stranger still the young woman who had turned into our Mum. I couldn't quite believe they were the same people, and searched the faces for features I could recognise; not quite convinced that they'd grown up to be the family I knew.

So I was thrilled today to find a whole new set of images that I hadn't seen before, and excitedly discussed with Keryn the identity of the people in them. The detail in the backgrounds was examined thoroughly and I still own several of the objects depicted in one.

But this one made us laugh, and knowing our mum I can see why it was never enlarged.

Mum's brother was living with us at the time and I see his hand in this set-up. I rather think that is a smoked fish on the plate and I can't read the label on the bottle, but it's definitely beer.

Our uncle, big brother who was 15 and Dad probably had a good laugh at this little vignette while Mum was out of the room, but she would have hit the roof when the prints came back for this! No way of knowing whether it was Keryn or me but it must have been pretty puzzling, judging by the expression!

I'm so grateful that our Dad loved photography and that we have this family history to look back over. It was largely due to his efforts that we have so much to illustrate our early life and document the way things were. Finding that little envelope today was like a special birthday gift from him.