I Need to Get Out More

Today was the second day in a row that I went shopping. That is unheard of for me. It's not because I don't love to go shopping, because I do, it's just that we haven't had a lot of money lately so I haven't been able to. Luckily that should change soon because at the end of the month my job is changing a bit.

I went to Office Max because I needed to copy some stuff for work, and I ended up getting a few fun things there. Then I wanted to look for something to put our Summer Reading Program stuff in so I went to Michael's because they had their baskets on sale. I found a great one with a lid. I like the fact that it has a lid because it hides all the paper inside. While at Michael's I decided to look around a bit. I really wanted to see the new Martha Stewart stuff they have there. There is a lot of neat stuff. Since it is over by the rest of the scrapbooking stuff I decided to check some stuff out. I really haven't been into scrapbooking, although I have done a few pages in a scrapbook years ago.

Most of my problem is that I am a huge slacker on getting prints of my pictures. As I was organizing the family room the other day I went through a box that I throw in 35mm film that needs to be taken to get developed. There are 70, yes 70, rolls of film that need to be developed. Here's a little background story on my lack of getting prints made. Back in 2002, two weeks after I gave birth to Hayden, my dad died of cancer. He didn't want a funeral so we just had a Celebration of Life at my mom's house. He died on a Saturday and we were having the Celebration the next Saturday, so we had a week to prepare. We made up some posters that had pictures of my dad from the time he was a child up until the most recent times. I hadn't gotten any pictures developed since shortly after Carson was born two and a half years earlier, so I had to take all my undeveloped film in that week, 35 rolls in all, so I would have some pictures of my dad and Carson to put on the posters. Well, that is the last time I had film developed. The only exception to that is our trip to China. As soon as we got back I took all of our film from that trip in before it could get mixed up with the rest. So, in the 70 rolls of film there are pictures from almost five years ago. The only fun thing about this is that when I do start taking the film in I will have no idea what to expect, so it is kind of fun seeing what pictures are in there. Also, I haven't printed out any pictures, except for a few here and there, of my digital pictures. I got my digital camera right before we went to China in 2005, so there are a lot of pictures. I haven't even printed out our China pictures because I can just look at them on the computer.

Anyway, back to my story. I am totally amazed at how much cool scrapbooking stuff there is. It has got me really excited to get all my pictures developed and get all my digital pictures printed out so I can start putting them in albums. I'm not a huge scrapbooker so I won't spend a ton of time on each page, but I do like to put a few backgrounds or stickers here and there. There are so many cool albums, too. I'm trying to think of how to organize my pictures. I've always thought I would do them chronologically, but now I'm thinking maybe by subject. I read that tip somewhere and I can't credit who I got it from because I can't remember, but I really like it. I want to do one for sports, one for the pets we've had, one for vacations, one for family reunions, one for each kid for all their birthdays, etc. Then I would have one or more just general albums with pictures of the kids around the house or at the park, etc.

I can't start doing this until I have our whole house organized because I may have some pictures hiding somewhere that I don't know about. I think I have all my pictures in a bunch of boxes that I know where they are, but over the years they have been in so many different places in the house that if I were to start some albums and then come across pictures that should be in an album that is already filled I would be really ticked off. I think that will be a project I will start in the fall. I got my first camera when I was about 10 and I'm 40 now, so I have 30 years worth of pictures just shoved in boxes. It's sad. I want to be able to enjoy them and let my kids see them, too.

One thing I did start doing is scanning in all my old printed pictures so I can have copies of everything on the computer. That way I can back all my pictures up onto CDs and store them somewhere else so in case our house ever burned down or got ruined somehow I would have copies of all my pictures somewhere else. Mike's grandma's house burned to the ground years ago and she lost everything. To this day the only thing she still talks about all the time is her photographs that were lost. Her family has hardly any pictures of when the kids were little.

Another thing I want to do is scan in all of my mom's pictures from when I was a kid and all of Mike's mom's pictures from when he was a kid. I would love to do an album for each of us of our childhoods.

It's so funny because yesterday and today I told Mike I was just going to be gone for a short time and I ended up being gone for hours because I was having such a good time looking at stuff. The funny thing is I don't even go to the grocery store. Mike does all the grocery shopping. We started that because years ago I was going to school at night and it made more sense for him to go do it while I was at school than waste our time on the weekend doing it. The other day Carson's class went on a field trip to a grocery store to see how things work behind the scenes, and I was just as excited as the kids. The other moms looked bored out of their minds, but I was having a great time seeing things I don't normally see.

I told you I need to get out more.