Sorry.
I always had it figured out like this:
Ocarina of Time
Mojora's Mask (for the young Link time line only)
The Legend of Zelda (new Link. Link meets Impa for the first time and sends him on the quest to rescue Zelda)
The Adventures of Link (Impa tells Link the Lengend of Zelda and that he is the hero of the triforce indicated by the triforce symbol on the back of his hand)
A Link to the Past (new Link. Lives with his uncle and know little about his parents. Zelda telepathically communicates with him in the middle of the night with a cry of help because she has been locked in the palace dugeon by the evil wizard. This part is definately the beginning of a new story, there is no way you could possibly make ALTTP a continuation.)
Link's Awakening (this has always been considered the sequal to ALTTP. It was originally written this way. Link saved Hyrule, his uncle is dead, so he goes off in search of more adventure and excitment. The instruction manual mentions this.)
Now with all these new games, I can see the timeline getting muddled. In The Adventures of Link they mention the decree that all first born female babies born the royal family of Hyrule are to be named Zelda. So this explains why there are so many Zelda's. The A Link to the Past comic adaption mentions the heros of Hyrule and that Link is a decendant of them. So I guess if you consider each one is related to each other and that every generation there is a boy named after Link, the first of the great heros of Hyrule. And that while there are numerous kids named Link, the games are only based off of the ones that have exciting things happen in their lives.
You really have to stretch some things to make them fit together. Perhaps the best explaination would have been that it is a legend and that these are different retellings of the same legend. The forumla is almost the same for each major game. Or an even better explaination is that they are just games, get over it, pick up a controller, and have some fun.
EDIT: Just thought I would mention, for those of you who have never played the very first Zelda game, it is still really fun to play. There is a freeware PC port availible under the name of "Zelda Classic" it has the option to use Super Nintendo style graphics for those who can't stand the old blocky NES figures. It is a very small file, works great on modern computers, and the game loads fast and can even be run in a window. I would recomend it over solitare for those lazy moments on the computer when your mind just doesn't seem to want to get any work done and your mouse constantly finds its way to the games folder in the star menu.