day 2 thankful for...

I am thankful for photos, for memories, for the opportunity to reflect back on things that have happened. One thing looking back does for me is put today in perspective. If my kids are being hard to deal with, looking back at photos helps remind me how cute they really are and now is just a small moment and looking back I'm only really going to remember the good things.

Now that it is cold (and yesterday was snowy), I am grateful for pictures of summer to remind me of the warm days and beautiful green grass.

Charlie and Jeremy got to go to a BYU game and had seats on the second row. Charlie's favorite thing was the "cougar tail" (giant maple bar).

Blogging Again?

I don't know if I'm really going to get into blogging again, but I have a post for today anyway. I've missed being creative and doing things with photos - i.e.. scrapbooking. Last week I spent a marathon day getting over 400 photos into a photo book (printed through My Publisher). It was awesome to get it all done in one day and the kids love looking back at photos. But I still crave the creative side of embellishing and using fun papers.

Here is a fun page that I did - it is a photo of when I was a kid - from the year 1989 (or so). I was dressed as a punk rocker. It's fun to look back and see photos of when I was a kid. I spend so much time with current photos that I haven't taken much time to look back at photos from when I was growing up. I must be in a bit of a nostalgic mood today, because this morning as I sat to read my scriptures I saw my journal on the shelf next to me and picked it up and began reading. It was my college-age journal (18-21 years old). I read for about an hour.

This is the other page I created today. A picture of Jeremy with Henry and Matthew looking at books. The pages I'm currently working on are centered on "thankful for...". I'm thankful for books and that my children love books.

Going back to digital scrapbooking felt a bit awkward because I'm rusty and out of practice. I also realized how far behind I am in Photoshop Elements editions - I have version 6 and version 14 just came out. I bought version 6 in 2008. It's time to upgrade. I tried to today, but I failed. I purchased a download, but didn't pay attention and got the Windows version instead of the Mac version. I have to wait a few days for them to refund the Windows version and then I will buy the Mac version - so frustrating.

So, what's new with us since the last time I posted a year and a half ago? Nothing big. We are still homeschooling, kids are getting bigger and older. We still live in Idaho, we still travel to St. George regularly to visit family.

Winter is here already. Today was the first snow day of the year and my kids made the most of it. Even before they had breakfast they were digging out snow clothes and suiting up. Snow pants, socks, snow boots, scarfs, coats, hats, mittens - oh my so much required. My kids love it. I, however, prefer warmer weather and flip flops. It's a good thing they went out first thing in the day to enjoy the snow. By afternoon it was mostly melted and gone.