White glass catchalls

This kitchen cabinet of our is in the most awkward place ever. One of those where you almost need to do a yoga move to get anything out of it. Not a place for your coffee cup. For. Sure. I should have showed you the countertop under the cabinet but it 'twas a bit embarrassing.

I've been cleaning out cupboards and closets ... one at a time. Pitching things. Call it January cleaning or whatever. Sure feels good!

This cabinet is sort of the catchall. Things you need at the ready but don' really want on the counter top. Combine that with a collection of white glass for the catching and .... you get a little of this action.

I am an avid collector of colorful writing implements that don't need to take up space in here.
The kids markers?
Yup.
Took them away.
I think their mom took them away.

This young man would be the reason. He really doesn't seem to have a color preference. Any color will do.

Seriously. He is the sweetest little quiet dynamo disaster love bug.

june comes to an end

A quick date nite at the W.

It was a different W that saw many date nites for many years, but why not right?

We happened into Costco on Father's Day for some quick stuff for a family day.

At the end of the aisle was one lone upright large tool chest waiting for us. The only one in the store. 

It went home with us that day and dear hubby has been organizing in spare moments.

It looks as though once or twice, maybe more, a tool couldn't be found and a replacement was purchased. Think so? I love the color of this drawer ....

As I love the color of my organizing as well.
One corner at a time.
One color at a time.

This past week we also lost a dear woman from this life. She has gained eternal victory and will be dearly missed here on earth. A group of people got together to sing and visit. 

I dearly wish my oldest son was able to be here. She was his second mom and his words of love break my heart. She taught us many things about life, love, faith, persistence and motherhood. She was also a character in many ways. I know that I have some priceless video of her.

I have patients whose lives and social schedules revolve around offices such as this. When nearly two hours is spent in waiting, I must say I develop a whole new empathy for them.

It got hot this week. It was warm before, but now it is hot. We have some bits of traveling coming up, and don't like to sit in the sun ourselves, so gave the ladies a little more shade over the weekend. This scene isn't making it into Country Living (my fave magazine ever) but the gals are a little happier. 

Getting warm outside means that afternoons can be spent indoors doing some of this kind thing. This wreath was started a year ago or more. It is another one of those "oh my ... what have I done" projects. I worked on it ... Alyx worked on it ... I worked on it some more. It is made of at least a million circles cut from unwanted white bedsheets. I don't recommend this undertaking.  It was not going to be done for last November, so I parked it away. It came back out this week and is done with the exception of embellishments. Any color preferences for embellishments?

We have spent our weekend with some precious visits. Dinner with Juha & Annette at Rock Springs Cafe on Friday evening. And serious baby snuggles at Darren & Gwen's Saturday evening. Aren't these identical little cherubs just the sweetest? I made a serious study to see if next time I can tell them apart. Any bets? My memory circuits are a bit overloaded, but I think I can do it!

Have a great week everyone! We will be traveling and haven't a clue what to pack. Looks like an umbrella for sure.

smart kids

Do you know that I have some super smart kids?
Like seriously.

I buy ground beef from Costco, take the round chunks of meat and shove them in a ziploc bag.
Toss that round hunk into the freezer (unless I brown them first which often happens) and can never get them thawed fast enough for a quick dinner because they're in a hunk. Which would be the reason I brown them first. Which also means that I never have raw meat to make into a hamburger patty.

Insert smart daughter.
She does this.
She doesn't freeze hunks of it.
She uses the ziploc and presses her ground beef into a flat thing that fills the bag.

Smart girl.
Fits in the freezer better for one.

Excuse my sink ... it needs a dose of bleach or comet or something.

And best of all ... drop it into a tub of water to thaw .. and dinner is almost cooked. 

Seriously. So fast.

We had absolutely scrumptious burgers on the grill last week. 

Twice.

Just call me a life long learner over here.

18 days early

For the past nearly 5 years, my cars have been parked in the sun.

Not a bad thing in the Phoenix winter weather, but summer?!

There is nothing like getting scorched by the seat and the steering wheel.

Sometimes and some places there just isn't an option.

It is scorch season.

My goal was August 1st. I wanted to be parked in the garage by then. Every time I tried to even walk in the garage to find one item, I nearly tripped and got trapped. It was looking sort of doubtful. 

Add husband to the equation ….

and I'm parked in there 18 days early. 

I can walk around the car!!

I think I can find things. At least I shouldn't break a leg doing it. Neither should I end up underneath a mountain of falling totes and boxes. Hopefully. The piece that makes me smile almost as big as a cool car is that I can now find the crafting stuff. The projects that need to be started or completed might just be within reach and findable. To be honest, I was having a bit of anxiety creeping into my life as my treasures were hidden.

The only way I was able to finally park inside was that the photo below had to happen first.

Behind the garage of this house is a carport that was rather full of stuff that needed to be moved out. It left on the 4th of this month, after which Jari moved out the rest that was left behind. He started replacing walls and putting in light switches and outlets where he wanted them. He took down a shop light that was hanging in there and added LED can lights instead that are incredibly easy to install, are flush with the ceiling and ….were on sale on Amazon! A hanging light wouldn't have worked well with his parking in this space with a ladder rack and ladders. Then came the paint. He used up some white paint and installed mounted shelves on one side. The shelves, incidentally, had been previously used as sleeping quarters in the trailer he used for dunes riding. I had been sorely tempted to take them apart and use the 2x4's for some benches but resisted. Good thing!

We have a few things here that we are storing for someone else as well. Have garage? We will fill! Eventually, we will get things more organized and it will all make some sense. No hurry for that one. Perhaps we will wait until it cools off a bit.

In the meantime, hubby has worked his tail off to get this done. Probably sweated out pounds he could ill afford to sweat out. When he is on a mission to get something done … look out! It is getting done!

I do have to tell you something else. Hubby and I share many of the same tools. Don't give me the vehicle fixing stuff. I don't want that. But the other stuff? Oh yeah! I now have a giant air compressor that is easily reachable. I don't need to unlock doors and run air lines across the yard in order to hook up a brad nailer.

I don't need to worry if the wind is blowing dust hither and yon anymore. I can paint and poly to my hearts content inside a closed garage. Except for  Mr. Kitty. I did closed my windows enough that he can't get in there and get cozy. I guess it remains to be seen if he tromps and leaves paw prints across freshly refinished surfaces. That could become a serious problem but I'm sure one that will have an easy to find resolution.

Cool happy dances over here!

missing pieces of the past

I miss my address book. The kind where you wrote names in pencil because some people moved so often. All I needed to do was grab the lovely little book and it had all the important addresses I needed. There is the church address book, but not all the addresses I need are in there. 

I went to mail some cards and a package last week and the package was no problem. That one I have memorized. The cards? Serious problem.

I've done this before. I head to GroupMe for the latest address updates. Then to Facebook family pages to see if the one I need is located there. Still nothing. Like serious! What am I suppose to do?! The file of Christmas card addresses isn't on the computer as far as I can tell. Must have moved it somewhere. Out comes the external hard drive.

Prayefully, I hook that thing up and see what I can find and voila! A Christmas card list from 2011. Okay. Not so up to date but the addresses I need haven't changed since then.

Serious. I was missing that little book so much. I do have an address book. It is full of passwords because that is what life is now. Maybe I should get a new one and fill it with family addresses and passwords.

Instead, I went to google to see how easy it is to print labels from Google Sheets. Looks fairly easy enough. So, I printed that 2011 list and transferred all the addresses off that thing onto a Google Sheet. The bright side is that it is accessible on my phone or computer or wherever I happen to be.

Now I just need to add about 100 more addresses to that thing and I'll be golden!

Until someone moves again and I don't update the list.
Then I'm back to square one again.

Can you believe we are saying goodbye to April today?
I might be in shock.

might win a game

If I was to play one of those "one point for each thing in your bag" games,

I might just win.

Do you carry a separate bag to work with you?

I do. I move things from my purse to my bag on Sunday night

and back to my purse on Thursday night. 

Not everything gets moved. 

None of this stuff.

I just carry it around and call it weight lifting.

it might just be time for a road trip

sometimes i measure that need by the size of my country living magazine stack.

when it starts to get out of control, it is time to get on the road

and drive hubby nuts.

cuz that's when i read and rip pages.

i only tear out the pages i want to keep.

he doesn't get it but he's a guy.

he doesn't have to understand ... only tolerate me.

we fly more than drive anymore tho.

what do you suppose my next flights seatmate will say when i start the demolition process.

they'll probably have earbuds in anyway.

my carryon bag just got bigger me thinks.

piles and piles

I have been on a mission for the past several months.

I am trying to clean out stuff.

Where does all this stuff come from?

I really haven't a clue.

All I know is that it multiplies faster than gray hairs on my head.

Paper.

I probably have the equivalent of a forest stored in boxes.

My goal (starting last Friday through next weekend) was to get rid of 5 boxes out of the garage.

I tend to make lists that are rarely achievable ... figured that one might be attainable.

After a jaunt to the IRS website so I knew what I needed to save, 

and another visit just to double check, I started going through boxes.

I do have a shredder, but apparently there is somewhere I can drop off a bankers box for $7 and 

have them do all the dirty work.

These boxes have been stored in a garage for the last 6 years or so.

One garage (not the present one) had scorpions in it.

So .... just in case those buggers had survived ... the boxes stayed outside.

Six boxes to recycle.
Two boxes of nursing books.
Another box of miscellaneous stuff that I need to decide what to do with.
But ... drumroll please .... the trunk is full and ready to shred!

The file cabinet is cleaned out.
This purging activity is so much fun that even Jari joined in and added to the pile.

That other box?
It has things like family history pages, old medical records and that kind of stuff.
Most of it probably scannable and stored in the great big cloud somewhere in the sky.

And this little charmer.

Just never know what is lurking around hidden in cardboard.

saving each treasure

I was born a person who has very sentimental tendencies.

I probably have most Christmas card photos that have ever been sent to us.

I have nearly every newsletter my mom sent to us for many years.

I have piles and piles and piles of paper.

We won't even discuss the pages torn out of Country Living magazine.

That activity (usually done on a road trip) completely confuses dear hubby.

What do we do with all this paper stuff? I can almost understand keeping copies of tax data, but what do we do with the rest of it. I have a file cabinet. The kind that holds paper. But I don't want more than one of those. I really don't want to ever own or purchase another 3-ring binder in my life. 

So I am scanning. A lot. I am trying a bullet journal type of thing this year and scanning is on a task list every week. (Except the last week of February!) 

The family newsletters are all going to be in one file which I can then share with my siblings.

The rest of them are going in appropriate files on some online storage service, easily accessible when I need to see them. Very nicely hidden away when I don't need to be reminded of them.

The photos are included in yet another bullet point in my journal. I am trying to get caught up on years ... let me tell you years! ... of Shutterfly book making.

I emptied boxes in the laundry room awhile ago and was making good progress on the binders stored in there. One after another. Scan and pitch.

However, I am moving through one room after another. This past week I went through the closet (which I made an office type of closet) in my spare bedroom. And you wouldn't believe it. Tucked away in there were at least 4 more of those stinkin' binders!

This shelf is one that is sort of in my face every day of the week. I see the projects and am reminded that I have to spend yet another hour in front of the scanner. And slowly they disappear. One after another.

Unfortunately, I have many photos that are scattered throughout cd's, external hard drives, printed and loose in boxes. They are next years project. They were really dubbed the "Alaska Project" and they are still in the same boxes as they were in 2007. Go figure.

I recently had the discussion about Christmas cards with a group of ladies. Some pitch them, others save them, yet others have guilt over the whole thing. My hope is to someday have them all in files which I can then play on a screen and enjoy watching them flip by. One after another. Watch the changes in friends and their families throughout the years.

Maybe that can happen in 2020?

one thing at a time

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.

- Vincent Van Gogh

I have the cutest little journal this year. Well, the journal may not be so cute but I think the doodles and colors are cute. I like the idea of celebrating accomplishments each week ... celebrating little ones. The power of the little checked off box.

I thought when I started it that I could easily accomplish the goals I had set. They were completely realistic in my opinion. What was I thinking?!

Here I am ... on week three ... and the page for this week is missing some of its possible color. I'll share little bits of the journal later, but one goal I have for this year is organization. That means cleaning out stuff. That means cleaning out stuff before other duties interfere with the cleaning. I thought I could fill box upon box and haul it off to a donation spot. One needs to be home to do that and is especially helpful if one feels good. Seriously helps. So far this year has not been conducive to that. It's bound to get better I'm sure.

Alyx was over the other day and I unloaded things on her. Several things left the house that I no longer need. My flour canister was among those things. I don't buy flour in 25 pound bags anymore. I rarely make bread and, if I do, it is one loaf of something. So I downsized to something that I think will hold 10 pounds. The big bad bread bowl that I haven't needed or used for years?  Not sure I'm ready for that to leave so it might be on a goal list for 2019. We shall see.

At least one thing left the house this week!

And I hauled in at least 5 things to replace it. Go. Figure.

Journals

Is this a challenge you face? 

This collection of oh so important things that you can't find anyway because you're not sure which book they ended up in?

I typically have a notebook with me wherever I go. As long as the handbag is big enough .. lately it doesn't hold much tho. I jot down things at seminars .. pages and pages. I take notes at camps and presentations ... again pages and pages. I recently took an ACLS class and yup ... even that had its own pages. 

Then there are websites and phone numbers. 

Passwords and addresses. 

Recipes and project ideas with shopping lists for each sometimes. 

I went through 6 of these little treasures. Shredded some pages .. pitched others into the trash. Then there are the notes I don't want to lose. Those are being scanned into my fave online storage place so I can find them should I need to. 

And this most favorite of all? I think I picked it up in one of those ridiculously expensive airport shops many many moons ago ... is a keeper. 

I'm going to fill it with motivational things. Maybe something to pause and read through when life seems overwhelming sometimes. When there isn't much you can do about it but adjust your own attitude. 

So if you see that book hanging around my house ... give it a flip through. 

filling up the calendar

Several missions accomplished today!

First of all I sat in the parking lot at work this morning (seriously early like) and talked to an insurance company. Our agent is local and we just bought a new truck. I'm trying to decide if I like the security of a local guy or do I go to Geico and save money. Frustrating decisions. Anyone have Geico out there? Any problems with them? I told the guy on the 1-800 number to hold off. We are still working with a car accident I was a victim of ... (I didn't tell him that!) but at some point I need to make a decision. In the meantime I guess I stay local.

This afternoon I scheduled the dentist. Another quandary. I work Monday thru Thursday and don't take time off for things like doctors and dentist. If they can't see me on my day off .. I will find someone who will. And then .. I don't have a dentist I am in love with anyway. Haven't had that kind of relationship with a dentist for a very long time. I fire them nonstop. I made an appointment for sometime in March when I'm off. I've needed to visit them anyway, but Sunday I had one mega strength Tootsie Roll that ripped a crown right off. It was due to go anyway, but hello?!

I also scheduled the carpet cleaner. Can't handle looking at it anymore. I've done the rent it yourself thing and wasn't impressed. In Alaska I had my own machine and used it semi frequently. However, if all goes as planned and I have my own home at some point ... I'm not putting in carpet. Anywhere. So no use buying one of those do it yourself things. I knew I had the name of someone in my phone but haven't been able to find it. Today I started at Z and worked my way backward. If there was a name I didn't know in my contact list, I clicked on it. Voila! It worked! I only had to go to S to find a Steve with a "Carpet Cleaner" listed real small after that. Small enough it doesn't show up when you scroll. Scheduled him for this week. Oh is that going to feel good!!

And ... I dropped off my camera at Tempe Camera today! That has been on the list for a long time. Getting that bugger cleaned and spiffed up a bit on the inside. Let's see if I manage to use it a little more.

We have a calendar full for this month and, to be honest, this year.

We're hoping to fill some time in October with elk hunting.

I know.

You just went back and reread that didn't you?

If we get drawn ... and that is a big old if.

These 3 guys sat at the table Sunday evening and got us hunting/fishing licenses and put in for tags. Juha & Annette and Jari & I are being hopeful. For what .. I'm not quite sure. We're planning a couples hunting trip. I haven't shot a gun in over 20 years. I am not a hiker. I don't hunt. I've kind of halfway had it on my bucket list as a joke. We had some travel plans to work around but are hoping to go in October. I think we find out in April. That will give me plenty of time to learn how to shoot, learn how to hike, learn how to be quiet, learn how to .... go shopping for pink camo?

The weekend before we were talking about adding in another kayak trip this year. I'm guessing that hunting can't be any worse than hauling my water logged butt in and out of that water logged kayak over and over and over.

If you have any suggestions on what I should add to the post 60 birthdays ... let me know. The 50's are ramping up pretty good!

Oh, and I have an appointment scheduled the end of this month to see if someone can do something about this left side of my body. It is being a bit of a pickle. Have to get that into some kind of working order before too long. It is actually starting to be problematic.

I was reading Torm a minute ago and thinking I should set some February goals myself. I make lots of to do lists and then am so pleased when I can highlight them as done. I really should add 25 miles of biking to the list for the month. I'll let you know if I accomplish it.

In the meantime .. it's Monday evening (I struggle with Monday evenings) and my feet are up while I'm in a near comatose state.

See you later this week with some crafting stuff!

Baby books full of baby bliss

A little over a year ago I posted about the project I was undertaking with my treasured children's keepsakes. That post is here if you want to go check it out.

Over the past year, I managed to get two of the kids books printed and then I just got busy with a few other things in my world.

Although I am a great fan of Shutterfly, I am not a great fan of spending money. Coupons here we come. I had free books expiring the last day of this month and figured it was time to get them done. Tia's book was scanned the other week to join the ones that were already done.

I seriously thought the last child was going to be royally ripped off in the photo department and was pleasantly surprised by what I actually had accomplished. I packed guilt away a long time and just went with what was done. Wasn't about to start finishing things like adding pages all the way to graduation. That would have been fun but .. not.

Last weekend I spent mega hours on the computer and got the last of them done!!

I know I may need a magnifying glass at some point to see them. And when that happens, I'm likely to grumble something fierce. By then I'll probably be grumping and grumbling about something anyway .. what's one more thing.

So today my bookshelf has these lined up on it. 5 skinny (some skinnier than others) little books full of sweet munchkin love. And although I'm sort of nostalgic ... I feel not one ounce of bad giving up the originals. In fact .. I feel great passing them along.

Each cover has the "official" 2 week baby picture. Are you of the age to remember the photo plans at Olan Mills? I hauled kids there for years! Two week old little love off to the photo studio. Good thing my kids were born back then!

Really, all the other books I order from Shutterfly are black. Black books. Black pages. I wanted something different for these. And I'm happy with them.

A quick peak at a page or two from the inside ..

I have another photo book project going on at the moment as well. I have a trusty assistant that is scanning pages for me on that one. She scans and I create on Shutterfly. She scans more ... I add more. They're getting there! More space saving, magnifying glass needing, memory capturing books are going to be lining my shelves as 3-ring binders hit the trash. 'Tis the year of the photo!

I counted 3 ring binders that need to be scanned before pitching. We started at 13. Not all of them will go to Shutterfly. Some will actually become shared documents via google with my siblings. Others will hopefully play in a slideshow at some point in my living room. Others are full of stuff that gets saved but could just as easily living in Google documents somewhere and be accessed as needed. But we're talking feet of space on shelves and in boxes ... which equals hours of scanning work.

Then some year we will get to the photo boxes and the photos stored on cd's and the photos on hard drives and the photos .....

This digital age is sometimes overwhelming!

twirling cords

Last weekend while I was wandering from one little project to another, I finally got the lint cleaned out of the blow dryer.

While I was at it, I remembered this little cord tip that I saw on Pinterest or somewhere equally time consuming.

I have several cords in my life that drive me nuts. One in the bedroom that plugs into my Bluetooth and another in the car that hooks my audio books to the car's sound system. Both have incredibly long cords that just get in the way all the time.

 

Blow dryer to the rescue.

 

I took the cord and wrapped it tightly around a spoon handle. The first one I did around a smaller diameter plastic spoon worked better. I don't know if it was the diameter of the spoon or that of the cord. After the cord is wrapped you hit it with some high heat from the blow dryer. I don't know how long I did it, probably several minutes. Both sides were heated, while wishing I had just one more set of fingers to work with! When it was nice and warm, I set it on the counter with my ever present coffee cup to weight the cord ends and keep the coil. Let is set until cool.

 

And after it cools ... voila!!

You have a completely different color and texture of counter top!

Quickest and cheapest kitchen remodel you ever did see in your life.

 

Actually, you have a coiled wire that will hopefully stay that way!

 

I'm a much happier driver now. I can find my plug without diving under the seat to look for it.
I sense a much more peaceful drive to work and home.
I might even cease to care that it is snowbird season and they have added at least 10 minutes onto my starving, dinner time, end of day commute.

memory bank

I don't know what you call this.
I'm sure there is a name for it.
Sentimentality perhaps?
Memory bank more likely.

This is where I stored most of my children's milestones.
I have nearly every calendar since we got married ... and that will be 30 years next month.
This is a smattering of them.
Seriously, they really don't take up that much space.
Much less space than my collection of white glass!

At different times the calendars have been color coded. More color indicated more chaos and the need to differentiate between classes of chaos.

The photo below gave me a great hint as to when Brock started wearing underwear.
Now, mind you, this was before cell phones.
And for sure before life's events were stored on those cell phones.
I also kept small purse calendars and have saved those as well.
But the kitchen wall was the most handy place to jot down something real quicklike.
Life was lived by the calendar on the kitchen wall.

Sometimes life just goes from day to day without capturing what really goes on at home. The phases of picky eating children, for example, come and go ... and are quickly forgotten. Occasionally I would fill in spaces on the calendar with what kidlets were up to. That was a bit more difficult to remember. In my humble opinion ... some is better than none.

For goodness sake, if you have a phone that allows you to keep notes, talk to your phone once in a while. If your world involves solo trips to the grocer or Target, talk to that phone on the way. Spend a moment before going to sleep (if your brain still functions at that time of the nite) and jot a note. If there is a "melt your heart" moment ... write it down. We all have good intentions of remembering everything, but it doesn't happen.

Before you know it, the space you had stored those precious moments in your brain is compacted and zipped into a file so that new data can be input. Like the next doctors appointment, school event, shoe size, birthday party, etc.

Seriously, take a minute and write it down!
Find a spot (the same spot every year is helpful to remembering where that elusive spot is!) to store those calendars and voila!
Easiest memory bank ever.

I went through that Ansel Adams calendar multiple times looking for what I thought I had taped in there. Maybe I missed it. I'm still certain I put it in there. A. Long. Time. Ago.

The first silver hair I pulled out of my head.

These calendars aren't just for kids' milestones!

school art projects

I'll get to the recording and keeping track of incisors, but it's dark outside.

Now isn't that the lamest of excuses.

It will be worth the wait. You won't believe what I saved!

Fast forward a blink or two to the saving of school projects.

These pages are all 8.5x11, so you can sort of imagine how small I cut some of these projects down to. If you've ever had a child in school, you also know that the size of a school project sometimes takes up the entire dining room table. Precious treasures. Beyond precious. Just a wee bit overwhelming when you multiply those things by 5 or 10.

Out came the camera ... projects that size just don't fit on my scanner bed. 

Projects were photographed and then printed on, what looks to be (I am getting forgetful!), photo paper. Some parts of the original projects were saved, such as the name Bock in the bright in bright primary colors.

The piece of art on the bottom right hand corner of this page just begs to be made into large wall art.

Huge wall art.

In hindsight, some of these stories could have taken up entire pages and would probably have been more easily read. But they are readable and if someday I need a magnifying glass or 250+ reading glasses, I'm sure the kids can fill my Christmas stocking with whatever I need.

Isn't she just the cutest ever?! Isn't it amazing that at 5 years old she wanted to be the woman she is today on her 21st birthday?

Happy Birthday Anna!

Imagine making a book out of these pages with a story to go along. Imagine making it for the child of the one who wrote the story.

And that, folks, is how I preserved the artwork of the young 'uns in this family. The kids still have envelopes of school work and artwork that I didn't toss. But these big pieces got squashed down to little ones ... and I seriously love them!

You're thinking, "that's a lot of work!" Yes, it is. So is feeding and doing dishes for a family. So is keeping up on their laundry. The homework. The school conferences. On and on. All of that is worth every moment of energy you expend. So was this.

I really am thankful that I saved pieces of their childhoods and thankful that the orange box folks are going to help me preserve it.

baby books and boxes

My oldest came to town ... rented a Penske truck ,,, packed in the belongings ... swept up his south and west coast warm weather loving bride ... and headed off to begin their lives in Williston, North Dakota. We miss them already.

Before they left, I realized that they might have a few square inches of room in their rig.

Being as I have things I'm holding on to that can now be passed on to these married children of mine,

I dug around in the garage, found what I was after, pulled up the floor (height of comfort in my advancing, incredibly inflexible life), turned on my computer and started scanning. And scanning. And scanning.

You may notice two books. Yes, there are two. The large one holds everything from the first photo taken in the hospital and hospital wrist bands to birthday cards, baptism cards, school projects and that kind of thing.

The second book held photos. Eight years ago, I sort of updated all these books. Sort of. Some pages are more done than others and I decided not to have any feelings of guilt that they weren't up to date. Life is kind of like that. In my heart, I think I did the best I could. There were times of life that were a bit more challenging than others. Periods of time where the collection of treasures and treasured moments were scant. But, they will be able to tell you when they lost teeth, when they walked etc. I hope that one kiddo doesn't feel like another got more. The method of recording events changed over time, as did the saving of them. I'll share how I remembered many of these things in the next post. Because trust me, I never managed to even complete one of those cute little baby book things you buy with good intentions.

Each child also has a box. There were many years when the box was allowed to come out on their birthday and they could rifle through it. Each box holds an outfit and the hat they came home from the hospital in. Beyond that, they hold different things. This one for instance holds a beautiful caste of Blayde's hand. I should have noted what year it was done before I gave it back, but it is still the same hand today. If you lined up 5 of these, I'd pick his out in a heartbeat. Some boxes have envelopes of school work. In the streamlining process 8 years ago, I came up with a plan for saving the large treasured school work. The ones you can't get rid of because they are priceless, but at the same time I wasn't hauling a monstrous tote to Alaska filled with kindergarten art projects! I'll share that later this as well. It might save you a few feet of space depending on your family size.

This is the stack that I sent to Williston in the Penske truck. And saved on my computer, and external hard drive (one can never be too safe!), are the treasured pages that I intend to turn into a Shutterfly book. It will take less than an inch of space on my shelf and when I'm older and grayer and don't have energy to get up at 5:30 in the morning to race my sewing machine through totes of cloth, I can imagine that I will thoroughly enjoy paging through the memories with my cup of coffee.

This past week, while I have been quite absent on blogger, I have been very present at home. I've been on vacation all week and there have been days when I didn't leave the house. Blissful days like that. One of those days I spent a good six hours perched in front of that scanner/computer and worked my way down memory lane. Alyx and Anna both have their boxes and books returned to them. Brock's is done and sitting in a much downsized tote in the garage waiting to be delivered to him. Tia's isn't done yet. In all honesty, that one I am going back to work on before I scan. She was about 10 years old when I last put things together for her books. I need to do a few more years before I can call that one good.

Somewhere in the moving (and the storage of the kids' treasured favorite stuffed animal saga), three of the furry critters have disappeared. Brock and Anna still had theirs. I don't remember what happened to this nose. Maybe the kids do.

As my children now have growing families of their own, it is especially fun to share these with them. Does my baby look like I did? Did he cut teeth the same time as I did? Did we wave good bye at the same time? All those fun things that they can ask me, but I will never remember.

My brain is overfilled with so many delightful things that the memory bank can't quite pull out the small details that they may want to know. Perhaps they'll find the details ... somewhere in those nearly 300 pages I've scanned and saved so far!