July 5th was my Independence Day
I finished my last scrapbook page for the family album! (see below .... 3 of my final pages....much nicer than usual since I knew I was almost caught-up and was celebrating with extra beauty)
Joel's last year in Little League. His eleventh year! Next year he will continue to be involved in baseball via umping.....but I won't watch that because I hate the way coaches and parents treat the umps. Luckily Joel has a much thicker skin than I do! Next spring he has chosen to play high school soccer (normally his fall sport) instead of baseball. Much more likely to get playing time and better cross training for country country.
2017-18 Show choir a family favorite activity (ok - not for Matthew who would have died before dancing on stage....nice voice though)
Anna's birthday. I wanted this to be especially nice given that she isn't quite as busy as the 2 other "at home" kids and therefore doesn't have as many pictures this year! (Matthew has too few to count, since he lives in Iowa City much of the year.)
Before you think - wow Betsy doesn't have anything to scrapbook......remember that I made a fateful decision almost 20 years ago that I would do separate kid and family scrapbooks. Matthew, Carolyn, Joel and Anna's books are not up to date. Anna's is the closest in some ways because a few years ago I felt bad that I only had her infancy scrapbooked and I did many pages for her. Plus she hasn't lived as long as the others! Additionally she is home more often and she and I enjoy working on her pages/looking at the albums.
My challenge relates to the fact that Carolyn graduates high school in 2 years and I want her albums caught up at that point. In the process I don't want to get further behind on everyone else. (Matthew's albums were not done for his graduation....I put out the family album for the more recent years...which still wasn't up to date!)
I have broken each year into typical pages: school year, Christmas, Easter, summer and vacation. (5)
Each kid and I have 5 categories per year of life. Me=19+ (done), Matthew=19+, Carolyn=16+, Joel = 14+, Anna=11 (exactly :0) Although this doesn't work out cleanly.....I figure I have 26 more years to scrapbook! (this is the number of years that I haven't finished working on.....an average of more than 6 years per child!!!!) Instead of being overwhelmed by this number and regretting my choice to make such nice albums for the kids......I have taken up the challenge. I want to be done by August of 2019. (Senior year will be busy enough without trying to scrapbook a ton.) 14 months.....that is less than 2 years of scrapbooking each month. (that is not 2 years for 4 kids....that would = 8 years via my crazy counting) So really I can do two categories from any given year for each child and mostly complete the goal. This is my plan. For example I am trying to get the summer of 2008 done for each child. (before you do the math and think I have WAY more to do than I have confessed, know that there are many more pages done in later years that I did when the urge struck me. (Many vacation and Christmas pages linger in the kid's boxes) Anna is mostly complete through fall 2013 for example.
I am posting this here so that everyone (by that I mean the 3 people who read this) can ask....."how are those albums coming?" to urge me on!
Last bit of good news - all the pictures are printed (except less than 10 (example below - Joel just got home from scout camp!)) I figure I am 3/4 the way organized by year....but perhaps I am being optimistic.
Love that you have set this goal rather than like you said, just throw in the towel because it seems too far. (Like me!) I always think that when I go back I will just go to Shutterfly rather than my paper 12x12s I did. Seems like maybe it would go quicker without the cutting and pasting and could type the text quickly. I don't know. Of course, by the time I actually get to where you are at with the focus, who knows what will be around then!
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