It's scrapbook time again. Every year (or so) it's scrapbook season. This is the time of year I hunker down, get out the pinking shears and spend weeks on end making beautiful, well-captioned, highly-organized scrapbooks for my children and me.
Okay, that was a big fat lie. I haven't ever once made a scrapbook. It's not that I don't have the tools with which to make one. I even have the skills to put together a nice online book and have it printed up like my sister-in-law is so good at doing. It's just not my thing.
But I do have yearly scrapbooks. I just have a simplified version of scrapbooking. At the beginning of the year in my file drawer I have an empty folder labeled "Scrapbook". When something scrapbookable happens like being invited to a wedding, I put the wedding invitation, program, thank you card from the bride, etc. into the scrapbook. I put all sorts of things in that folder. Birthday cards, ticket stubs from movies, my number badge from a race, a pretty leaf I found in the yard, you name it, if it's memorable and relatively flat, it goes in that folder.
To keep the year in some semblance of January through December order, things always go into the front of the folder. Some years the folder has been rather fat. Let's say I got married, or maybe I had a son, and then I had a daughter. Lots of exciting life events and my scrapbook folders have been pretty full for the past three years.
At the start of the new year I take the contents as is, in the order they were stored and put them in a FedEx bag. FedEx bag? Yes, FedEx bag. I have a stack of FedEx bags that must be working on seven-years-old now that are left over from a prior job. FedEx bags are wonderful. They're made of a Tyvek-like material and they're the perfect yearly scrapbook size. I will be sad when I run out.
After stuffing a whole year's worth of memories into my FedEx bag I label it, "Scrapbook 2012" for instance, and then...I don't mail it anywhere. I stick it in a box in the attic. Waste of a FedEx bag? I don't think so. Those bags are fulfilling their use of storing something important for years and years, not some puny overnight trip.
This year I had three scrapbook bags, one for me, one for my son and one for my daughter. It's not a fancy way to scrapbook, but I'm keeping the memories and I can keep a lot more each year than I'd be able to fit in a stylish, three pictures per page scrapbook that would take me weeks to finish. It's not for everyone, but I like my simplified scrapbook system.
The Big Boy Update: Baby Bob Costas. My son has hit the age of narration. His grasp of language is good enough with enough vocabulary that he spends a lot of time telling you what he's currently doing, what his sister is doing, what you're doing, if it hurts, where it hurts, what just happened, etc. We repeat what he said to confirm he got his words ordered correctly, such as, "I eat the soup." Followed by, "Yes, you're eating the soup."
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: "Can you hand me the pacifier?" She's done this more than once, yesterday while she was still waking up. She knows the pacifier is for sleeping and in the bed. Her brother gladly hands his over or puts it on the top of his crib when he gets up. But I didn't think she understood me. I asked her if she could hand me the pacifier. She smiled, handed it to me, looked down to find a second one that got lost in the middle of the night, picked it up and handed it to me too.
Someone Once Said: Miriam had hair called “red” even thought it was not the color called “red” when speaking of anything but hair.
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