Going back in time...

Cheesin' with Daddy, age 4

Our family is not known for its organization.  Or, rather, most of our family is not very tidy.   One of us is very orderly, and he tries to survive in a family who values entropy.  Most of us also have amazing skills of procrastination.

We have a couple of decades worth of family photos.  All jumbled in series of shoe boxes.  All of them are from pre-digital age.   One of Hannah's favorite ways to spend time together is to pull out a box of photos and run through handfuls of pictures.   She loves pictures from she was little; shrieks of laughter emerge when she sees a ridiculous pose, or a satisfied sigh when she comes across a beautiful one.

Hannah has remarkable stamina and interest in the family pictures.  (means=the rest of us are sick of it)

But she's been in heaven lately because we're finally sorting out all the boxes and loosely organizing pictures by year.   Then they'll all be shipped out to be digitized and put somewhere in the cloud or hiding in a terabyte external hard drive.

Two year old bunny...

Mischievous and hungry two year old.  

One of my favorite pictures ever.  Fourth birthday!

It's a good time for us to take on this task. We have a month to get it all done.  Our formal dining table is COVERED with pictures.  With Thanksgiving coming up, we'll need a clean table for our turkey!

Disclaimer:  Kate and I spent a long time organizing these same boxes of pictures over a decade ago. We sorted them out along the perimeter of my bedroom.  We had almost finished when Hannah managed to sneak into my room. She made an ENORMOUS mess, shuffling all of the pictures into a mound.  We were so disheartened that we just put them into boxes where they've lived since.

Laggardly

All right.

I've been shirking my responsibilities around here. There has been nothing interesting or humorous in my life lately I guess (unless you count last night's Mom's Night Out and the discussion about shaving...but I don't think I need to document that on the internet).

News in the household includes Chris flying to St Croix yesterday! There were a few potential glitches that did not materialize, for which I am exceedingly grateful. I am assuming that no news is good news, and that Opa and Chris are now gearing up (literally) for their first scuba dive of the week!

After Hannah's camera went into mystery seclusion a few months ago, and my Nikon D40 drowned, I was camera-less for a bit. So I rationalized the purchase of another digital camera, thinking I'd get my Nikon fixed at some point (just to get it looked at is $250). I told Chris it was technically his camera, that he could take to college in the fall. Of course, I never let him touch it. Until yesterday. So now he has "his" camera to document the beautiful Caribbean. And I don't.

But.

The amazing thing is that Hannah found her camera! Apparently she put it in her Christmas purse (shiny black patent leather clutch) to keep it safe. And it was. And is.

This is generally my approach when I lose something in the house. I lose it, and assume it will find it's way to to surface at some point. Usually, I do give a cursory search. But if it isn't where I look, I just give up. It shows up on its own, or I end up replacing it. Of course, as soon as I replace it, it reappears and makes me feel foolish.

Case in point: Remember how Hannah was working on all those Girl Scout Badges? Well, we had made great progress, and I kept all her work and documentation in the large 237 page spiral bound Badge Book, which has all the badge requirements listed. She had completed about 75% of five badges. And then I cleaned the kitchen. Or, more likely, I shuffled the kitchen. And the book went missing. I had a theory that the book (and the work) went into the recycling. It didn't surface. And it didn't surface. And I secretly was suspicious that The-One-Who-Is-Tidy (certainly that's not me) might have "cleaned" it. After a month with no book, and no progress on the badges (yay! another reason to procrastinate!), I decided to buy a new book, figuring that the old one would definitely materialize promptly, and I could return the new one.

But it didn't.

I have this desk in my kitchen (but in black):

(and now, coincidentally, I can't find Hannah's camera, so here's a Pottery Barn stock photo)

I keep all of Hannah's homeschool stuff in the bottom cabinets, and my cookbooks and current library books on the shelves above. In the middle, where I can hide everything, I have piles of junk. Phone books, my expired coupon collection, loose recipes, catalogues, seed packets, mail that I want to save (for no apparent reason), odds and ends, piles of post-it notes that no longer stick, balloons, and tons of other stuff. I don't even know what's there, because I keep it closed. I peek, once in a while. And I shuffle things into it. We've been in this house for 18 months and I have never really removed anything from it. I just add to it. And it's pretty much full. (Understatement font.)

I decided I'd search for the old book. And I looked. Honest I did. I looked in the desk. And my other desk. And all the bookshelves. And other places too. And so did Chris and James. But we didn't find it.

So I started to recreate Hannah's work. And started writing in the new book. And I didn't like it one bit. So I quit. And we were in stasis. Me, Hannah, and the Girl Scout Badges. And the end of the Girl Scout year is fast approaching, and I have no documentation.

And then, three days ago, Voila! I open the desk, and there, sitting on top of the phone books, was the original badge book!

"No way!", you say.

And I reply, "Way."

The lesson that I take from this is that I am rewarded when I procrastinate.

And now we have to cram the rest of those badge requirements in to the next 6 days. And I saved the really difficult ones for the last. Because I'm smart like that.

I hope this dispells that vicious internet rumor that I am an organized person.

The good news is that soon you will likely be treated to more of Hannah's random photographic endeavors. If we find the camera again. And buy new batteries.

P.S. Lookie there--I have a new widget about the Bone Marrow Registry. Please register--it is so easy and would normally cost about $100, but now it's FREE for the next 10 days!

This 'n that

Nothing very interesting going on here. Just some excuses for the boringness of the past few posts!

My excuse: It's the wear and tear on the Momma due to excessive sleep deprivation. There is no drama with CPAP, just excruciatingly interrupted sleep. The new nasal mask is arriving on Monday; I am SO tempted to just take the next two nights off. But I won't. It's not fair to Hannah to stop using it on my whim.

Another excuse: My camera. My poor camera. It soaked in a liter of water for 30 minutes at soccer practice last week. A series of very unfortunate events, too boring to type, resulted in a dripping wet Nikon D40. Much to my surprise, after 3 days of drying, it works! At least, as long as I don't leave the battery in it. It drains the battery very quickly, even when turned off. So there is a problem. For now, I will just keep removing the battery as soon as I'm done taking a picture!

Yet another excuse: Hannah took her camera into her room a couple weeks ago. She wanted to keep it in her room. I heard her taking pictures in there. But she couldn't find her camera the next day, and I haven't seen it either. She's even cleaned her room twice since then. I'm sure I could find it if I helped her clean. But that isn't my style. I usually have be expecting company before I'll help a kid clean their room!

Without camera, no inspiration.

So, today I jiggled my battery in and out and took a few pictures.

We've started to deck out The Boy (Chris) for college. I don't think he's had a blue blazer since he was in cotillion!
He's gotten quite a bit taller since then! He's a solid 6+ feet tall. And now ready to meet the Dean, or the college president, or, even, go to church on Easter.

I received some airmail today.

She made a pretty decent airplane I think!

We were out of butter yesternight. We had to eat Tagalongs instead of making our own cookies. (oh, the torture! Ripping open a new box of Girl Scout cookies instead of making a pile of dirty dishes?? Nibbling on the chocolatey-peanut buttery deliciousness? If you insist...)

Hannah reminded me to buy butter today. Several times. We now have delicious peanut butter cookies.

This is a good thing because we only have two more boxes of Tagalongs.