A to Z Challenge 2024, Charboneau, Laurence [Di Lorenzo]

Theme Reveal – My Life: The Prequel (in Snapshots) #atozchallenge2024

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When the annual A to Z Challenge begins on April 1, 2024, Molly’s Canopy will participate for the sixth time in the month-long blogging marathon. My theme this year is My Life: The Prequel (in Snapshots) — adding a bit of my parents’ stories to the family history mix.

Background

In 2017, I blogged about Whispering Chimneys: My Altamont Childhood, where my genealogy journey began in the early 1950s.

In 2020, I returned to my childhood in Endwell: My Elementary Years to explore how my interest in family, ancestors, and heritage germinated once my family moved to the suburbs around 1957.

In 2021, I revisited my early adolescence in Endwell: My Early Teen Years as I came of age in the early 1960s – amid rock concerts, world events, and memorable visits to family.

Last year, I wrapped it all up with Endwell: My High School Years during the rebellious Sixties, which engendered a new, activist outlook that would carry me into young adulthood.

My life: the prequel

So enough about me. Now it’s time for the prequel. What led up to my arrival on the scene? Who is ultimately responsible for me even being here? And who encouraged my interest in genealogy, inspiring me to continue tapping away on family history stories?

Who else but my parents, Norm and Peg (Laurence) Charboneau — intrepid partners on many genealogy road trips, guardians of the family archive, and the stars of this prequel!

• My inspiration: Genealogy bloggers who wrote about their immediate families during previous challenges.
• The rationale: We spend so much time searching for our distant ancestors and telling their stories that we forget to write about more recent generations. As family historians we owe it to posterity to include ourselves and our closest relatives in the mix.
• The impetus: Not getting any younger, so there is no time to waste in getting these stories out there.

Leaving a historical record

Have you ever wished your ancestors had left letters, a diary, or some other tangible record for posterity? I know I have, and in this year’s prequel I’ll use snapshots — the modern mode of record keeping — to capture key moments in my parents’ early lives.

My plan is to blog about my mom and dad’s respective childhoods in the upstate New York communities where they grew up and went to college, then their early work years before marriage. Along the way, my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other relatives will show up to take a bow.

The stage is set

• Time & Place: The 1924-1950 in upstate New York and New Jersey.
• Backdrop: My parents’ childhoods and teens, their college years, my dad’s WWII service — then how they met, courted, got their first jobs, and got married.
• The Cast: My parents, their immediate and extended families; their neighborhood, college and work friends; and eventually me, the first of their five children.

Please take a seat and get comfortable. On April 1 the curtain rises on My Life: The Prequel (in Snapshots).  See you then!

© 2024 Molly Charboneau. All rights reserved.

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45 thoughts on “Theme Reveal – My Life: The Prequel (in Snapshots) #atozchallenge2024”

  4. I loved reading your posts last year, and I very much look forward to your AtoZ posts this year. You’ve chosen a great theme. I agree with you that it’s important that we leave information about ourselves along with our ancestors. Welcome To AtoZ 2024.

  5. Exciting theme reveal! I’m looking forward to following your A-to-Z journey throughout April. Best of luck with the challenge. I’ve restarted my blog and deleted all the old content since I’ve been away for about 10 years and am coming back with the A-to-Z Challenge, hopefully it’ll give me some blog theme motivation and some dedicated readers. My theme is here: https://illusionsofchaos.blogspot.com/2024/03/hello-again-atozchallenge-theme-reveal.html

  9. You are a brave soul to take up the A-Z blogging challenge again. I had thought about it and had a theme identified. But life intervened and In noway could I keep up with a post per day in April.. I look forward to reading your posts. Good Luck!

  10. I’m impressed with your dedication to write an account of your family’s recent history in support of your research into the older generations. But I’m more impressed that you want to compress it into 26 days! Much like a marathon, I’d rather watch and cheer you on from the sidelines :—)

  13. Can’t wait for this! Sounds like a fun and interesting way to blog about your family and relatives! You always have such fun and ingenious ideas, making it all the more interesting to read about! 🙂

  14. Pingback: Friday’s Family History Finds | Empty Branches on the Family Tree

  16. Great theme! Thank you for posting this, because I’ve been looking for a blog carnival or such-like to be involved in. Maybe I can even complete it this time! You have obviously given a lot of thought to this event.

  18. I wish my ancestors had left me some documentation. One of my uncles on my father’s side did genealogical research on that side of my family but I don’t have much on my mother’s side. The Holocaust, unfortunately, complicated things. I look forward to dropping in from time to time.

  20. It sounds like you have another interesting A to Z lined up! I look forward to learning more about your parents as you shine the spotlight directly on them this year.

    I’ll be doing the women in the Edelweiss Club in Montgomery, Alabama.

  21. I love genealogy and family history. It’s easy to trace some of the branches on my family tree because of the noteworthy people on them (which was a total surprise to me), but it’s much more difficult to go back more than about 200 or so years and learn many details for my commoner ancestors.

  23. Stopping in to take a look at your theme and wish you a happy March and a wonderful April. Can’t wait to read more during April! ♥

  24. You know, you are right. I do hope my ancestors had left something for me.
    In one of the previous challenges, one someone suggested I leave something for my descendants. I started do it… then I stopped.
    Maybe I should reconsider.
    But then,, they will have a lot to read on my blog, LOL!

    Have a fantastic challenge!

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