Almost February

Guess I should do a bit of catching up before it's February, eh? Here's some of what's been going on around here...

1. Photographs. I think I've figured out what we want to do with our professional portraits. I haven't done anything about it yet, lol, but at least we made a decision. We're thinking that our mantle could use a refresh...realizing we haven't changed anything on it for years. I'll share when we get around to ordering. In the meantime, here's one more photo from the shoot that I missed before:

For the record, Nathan continues to be the tallest, and all three boys are within an inch or two of each other. I'm a good 8-9" shorter than Micah.

2. Persnickety Prints. The digital layouts I ordered arrived awhile back and look great. I've added them to the appropriate scrapbooks and fully recommend Persnickety Prints...great quality and prices!

3. Omaha. Asher and I drove back to Omaha last week. It was pretty uneventful and we got him settled in before I flew home. His semester started Monday and he seems to be enjoying his classes. He's considering a minor in Aviation so is taking an introductory class in that (which apparently has only 8 students so they might even get to use the simulators), has an honors seminar that sounds fun, and is enjoying the three classes in his major. (And with Asher's departure, we're back to being a household of three...it's quiet.)

4. Last semester. Noah's enjoying his last semester at CSU...balancing his time between classes, his senior project rocket propulsion team, and job searching. He's busy and happy, though he could do without the snow and cold since he bikes or walks to campus from his apartment every day, lol. 

5. College search. Micah's classes seem good...not overly challenging this semester so trying to just stay on top of that. Meanwhile, since it's the end of junior year, we're also in the midst of college searches and SAT prep and all that. Micah's direction for college is much less defined than Noah or Asher's searches were...so it's a bit more of a process. We're hoping to narrow things down and possibly visit a few schools over spring break.

And that's mostly what's been going on here in the second half of January. I've been gathering stuff for taxes and other paperwork and touching base with each boy for the various things each needs to be doing (finding textbooks, paying tuition, deciding about renewing leases, figuring out colleges to visit, gathering tax paperwork, etc). Not too exciting but getting 2022 off to a solid start. :) 

Thankful Thursday

Looks like it's been a bit since I've done a Thankful Thursday post. (Apparently I haven't done one yet this year, lol.) Today, though, there's just one thing I want to share. Today, I'm thankful for...

My friend Tania. Those who are friends on Facebook know. I met Tania about 14 years ago when she lost her mom and I lost my dad...both gone much too soon. We were both scrapbookers and met through those connections. Over the years, we worked together on the Good Grief Blog (scroll to the bottom of this post)...documenting our grief journeys through scrapbooking. Here's one of the layouts she shared:

After the Good Grief Blog, we stayed in touch...more recently chatting about our kids as her Ashlyn and my Asher were choosing colleges...as her Ashlyn and my Micah were dealing with their juvenile arthritis. Tania is one of the most positive, kind souls. Truly. She has two beautiful daughters roughly the same ages as my youngest two sons. She has a husband she's been with since high school who adores her.

I've shared some of her husband's posts on Facebook. Tania's in the hospital with Covid...on a ventilator and dialysis. The doctors have said that there's basically no hope and that even if she survived her heart failing, she'd be on machines the rest of her life. So, her family has made the heart-wrenching decision to remove the machines tomorrow. It's awful and my heart goes out to them. Please say a prayer for them all...Tania, Doug, Ashlyn and Emma Grace. If you feel moved to, visit the GoFundMe page that friends have set up for the family.

I'm so thankful to have shared in their journey and know that my life is richer for knowing Tania. 

One little word

It's that time of year again when I pick a word. Read this post for my past selections. :)

Last year, I chose the word START. It didn't work out exactly as I had in my head, but I still feel good about it. I started a number of things and have mostly finished many of them...primarily related to starting the next phase of our lives and planning for the future. That all seems to be on a good track, which is happy and will continue to be a focus.

This year? Honestly, I thought this year's word was going to be "learn" and was just behind on posting this because I couldn't think of anything profound to say about it. But. Now I don't think that's the right word. I still definitely want to learn things this year...learning new things is always a good goal. :) The word that's calling to me, though, is LIVE.  

To LIVE is a privilege denied to many, and this quote shared at the end of the latest James Bond movie "No Time To Die" is sticking with me:

For 2022, I want to LIVE...with intention, to savor experiences, in gratitude. I want to use my time and use it well. I have some specific ideas on what that will look like and am looking forward to the unforeseen ways it will also play out. So grateful to LIVE.

Tooting my own horn!

So. It's been on my "to do" list for awhile but I finally finished! I organized and backed up digital images of pretty much all of the scrapbook layouts I've done. 

Once upon a time, you see, I scrapbooked. A lot. I got paid to do it, was a contributing editor for Creating Keepsakes magazine (had a monthly column), authored a book about scrapbooking, was on numerous design teams, taught classes, etc. Strange but true. :) Then, once I was homeschooling all three boys, I switched gears and pretty much stopped scrapbooking...recording our memories here on my blog instead. (Feel free here to skip to the end if you just want to see old layouts.)

As I've been purging and organizing things around here, now that boys are mostly self sufficient and all, I've digitized, organized and backed up just about every photo in the house and on my computer...and a couple bins of photos from my mom's house. But. I hadn't tackled the scrapbooks. 

The recent fires just south of here that wrecked such devastation, though, were the kick in the pants I needed. Now, heaven forbid that something should happen to our home, I know I have these memories preserved still. I have them backed up both to an external hard drive (that lives in a fire-proof safe) and to the cloud. Whew.

The entire process went much smoother than I was expecting, too, which was a lovely surprise. This was thanks to a couple things...

• Because many of my layouts were published, I'd had to take photos or scans of them along the way for my records and billing purposes. I'd gotten into the habit of photographing each layout as I finished them. (The downside here was that I saved the digital files according to when I finished the layout...and I didn't work chronologically. The other issue was that I wasn't consistent in how I named files, which made finding things trickier than necessary.)
• Thanks to all the physical photographs I've digitized, I found this dandy app called Photomyne. Turns out that it worked great for layouts also! I just put each layout on the kitchen table, shot it with my phone from above, and then the app let me select the corners to keep things square/flat. From there, I uploaded everything to my computer, renamed things, and organized. (The downside to this part was that the oldest few scrapbooks are the lovely Creative Memories style where each page is strapped together with page protectors that slide over the layout rather than page protectors where you slide a loose layout into the sleeve...so it was next to impossible to remove a single layout to photograph. I had to do it with the layout still in the album. And those page protectors were annoying, lol.)

So. For those who are interested, my process was...

• Pull a scrapbook off the shelf and create a folder on the computer for that scrapbook. 
• Flip through the scrapbook and either find the digital file for the layout or flag it to photograph later. If I found the digital file (from the folders organized according to when I had completed the layout), I copied it over to the folder for that scrapbook. I put the layouts in order by how they appeared in the scrapbook.
• Once I'd gone through all the scrapbooks, I went back to photograph the layouts that I'd flagged and created a digital file to put in the folder for that scrapbook. I added those in the appropriate spots.
• And. I discovered that toward the end of my scrapbooking career, I'd done 37 digital layouts that I'd never printed. So, I ordered prints of those (they should be here later this month), figured out what scrapbook they should go in and added the digital file in the appropriate spot for that scrapbook folder.
• Oh! And I discovered a drawer in my office with loose layouts that I hadn't put into an actual album. So, I figured out where those went and proceeded as necessary. 

And now I have 41 separate folders on my computer for different scrapbooks. I know that some of the files aren't great print quality but feel like the important part is having the memory preserved, so...whew.

And. Along the way, I had a great time reminiscing! Even the oldest (arguably ugliest, lol) layouts held so many memories. I love that they're all captured! Here's a totally random sampling from different periods and subjects...

Okay, I must stop. So. Many. Stories. :) Thankful to have them recorded and now also backed up. 

Ten on Tuesday: Portraits!

Apparently it's been about 16 years since we last had any professional portraits taken as a family. Who knew? We've taken plenty of pictures on our own but haven't had official portraits taken. So, we scheduled portraits with Wild Bliss Photography for just after Christmas...rescheduled once on account of wind and lack of sunshine...and ended up with a gorgeous day with fresh-fallen snow. It took us a few minutes to get comfortable with the process, but we ended up with a plethora of great shots...very happy! I can't pick a favorite so here are ten that I particularly like:

And, in case you were wondering, here's a bonus...that last family portrait we had taken:

It was just at one of those photography places at the mall but look at how adorable those boys were! (This was December of 2005.) 

Now I just need to figure out what to do with all these wonderful shots... ;) (If you have any good recommendations or suggestions, please let me know!)