While Shandy was napping with the baby, I let Ben have the TV and sat down to continue this project.

Shandy sent a picture to her parents recently to let them know where some of our important papers (like our wills) were stored and all of my Father-in-law's coins were visible in the shot, stacked up nearby. I pointed that out to them, and my wife made the comment that my FiL would like seeing that and that knowing something was being done with them. That got me feeling motivated to continue with this after an elongated pause.

So today I finished labeling these new additions and started mixing them in with what I had before from my grandfather and other sources. Today was focused on Germany and Italy, but I have a stack to work through for Spain, Denmark and Turkey - Turkey was a surprise. I wasn't expecting so much from Turkey.

Working on this always seems to get me feeling oddly emotional because of what it is - a mixture of my grandfather's coins and coins given to my mother to give to me and coins friends from other countries have given me and now it'll include coins from Shandy's father and childhood. It's now a multi-generational thing that draws from both sides of my son's family that they will have the chance to be the 4th generation to hold and add to. There's always been that connection to my grandfather and now it will tie in with her father - a man I have learned over the years that I have more in common with than I would have guessed when I met him or when he briefly wanted to kill me for knocking up his daughter. Lol

Flipping through this binder, I can't help but thinking I would have flipped over it as a kid. I would have been amazed and in awe.

Ben did come over at one point and was briefly blown away by it. Lots of "wows" and "cools." He grabbed several coins off my neat stacks to show me and we talked about it briefly before he brought up the real reason for coming over - after 3 episodes Netflix had paused his show and he couldn't find the remote. Lol of course, none of the coins he picked up to look at were returned to my neat little stacks...

I'm still not finished, but I'm getting closer. It is however becoming clear that I may need another binder - not a problem I was really expecting to have any time soon when I got that big 'ol thing a couple years back.

There are several coins in the lot that I could call out just for being cool to look at. Some of these will probably get more discussion but I'll try to do at least a little better than a simple, "Hey! LookIt! Ain't it cool?!?" - Although I could totally see taking pictures of a bunch of the coins from Greece and sharing those just because.