A portrait of my children, once a week, every week.

(erm, with a little catching up to do)

photo by my mom

A portrait of my children, once a week, every week.

Iain: a favorite game

Elijah: transplanting (photo by Iain)

Galen: identifying birds

Màiri Rose: she wanted me to teach her ‘Miss Mary Mac’

A portrait of my children, once a week, every week.

Iain and Elijah: the yard is still half covered in snow and they think it’s summer

Galen: sliding during the game they call “base run”

Màiri Rose: this is new.  She says, “I took of my dress because it was making things complicated”

A portrait of my children, once a week, every week.

All of the above are from Easter.

A portrait of my children, once a week, every week.

Iain: a rare still moment

Elijah:hard at work

Galen: he’s always the first to class and the last to leave

Màiri Rose: she sits outside the door copying everything they do

A portrait of my children, once a week, every week.

Iain: I don’t even know what to say about that.

Elijah: brothers

Galen: being big

Màiri Rose: pretending to be big

A portrait of my children, once a week, every week.

Iain: Why not?

Elijah: At work.

Galen: Catching snowflakes.

Màiri Rose: She invented a new game involving a snowball and a big slab of ice.

 A portrait of my children, once a week, every week.

Iain: He’s reading Little Men, by Louisa May Alcott and various Calvin and Hobbes books.

Elijah: He’s reading Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott and various Calvin and Hobbes books.

Galen: He’s having Little Men read to him at night.  He picked out Time of Wonder and Lentil, both by Robert McCloskey for daytime reading and is working his way through Len Bug and Jen Slug on his own from our favorite collection of early readers by Shelley Davidow.

Màiri Rose: Looking at When My Baby Dreams by Adele Enerson, as well as any other book featuring babies that she can get her hands on.  She also came home with a book called My First Gymnastics Class from which she has been very carefully copying movements and “practicing” daily.  The dress she’s wearing here is one that I wore as a flower girl when I was her age.

All of this week’s photos were taken at the library.

Just a little note to say that I realized I somehow missed several key pictures when I published my last post on our bathroom renovation.  So if you would like to see a little more, do scroll down a bit!

A portrait of my children, once a week, every week.

Iain and Elijah: Cool guys wear sunglasses.  Even in the middle of winter, at 5:00 at night, inside a Home Depot.

Galen: seven

Màiri Rose: Look Mommy, I wrote “Queen”!

~click on the pictures to enlarge them~

I’m starting a new tradition; in addition to birthday sweaters, there will now be birthday books.  Just simple little photo books showing the year that’s past from the child in question’s point of view.  Their baseball games, dance classes, choir performances, horseback riding lessons, school work, hobbies, projects, collections, etc, all bound up together in a little book of snapshots representing that year of their life.  I think they will be well loved.  Above are a couple of pages that I’ve created for Galen, of his 6th birthday celebration, in preparation for his 7th birthday at the end of this month (note: I did leave some of the journaling off these pages as it was of a personal nature).

I’ve used a lot of different scrap booking products over the years.  From the good old-fashioned paper and pen kind to photo book products from many of the major retailers.  When I had an opportunity to review My Memories scrap booking software, I decided to give it a try with this project in mind.  I’m still experimenting and learning all about the program, but I can say there are a lot of options with this software.  So much more then anywhere else I’ve tried.  I know everyone has their own style and preferences, for me I often find the challenge is in being able to create pages that are basic enough to suit my own minimalist, photo-journalistic style.  I don’t like a lot of extras.  I want clear large pictures and not much else.  Not a problem!  As you can see I did play around a bit with a few backgrounds and some other stuff, just to see.  And of course I had to try the ric rac.  I mean, it’s ric rac….  If, however, you happen to like all of the bells and whistles, well, holy cow, feel free to spend a year or two browsing through all of the options, some free and some for a small fee.  Those are all of the add-ons to customize your style.  The basic software comes with many, many options to begin with (enough to last me a lifetime).  And it’s not just about photo books…you can create calendars, cards, all kinds of multimedia stuff that I haven’t even begun to delve into.  I’ve just discovered a whole collection of youtube videos on how to use some of these features and I’m looking forward to creating all kinds of interesting projects.

One of my goals with the birthday books was to capture some of the little details of that particular year.  The things they will look at years from now and say, “Oh yeah!  Do you remember the year I made all kinds of paper dolls?” or “the year I wove like, 40 potholders”.  I want pictures of favorite books and toys, all the small things that change so rapidly as a child grows and are easy to forget, but so much more pleasant to remember.  The pages below are pictures of Galen’s room in our old house, complete with peeks into work and treasure baskets.

These are the kinds of things that I think he will look back fondly on and be happy to remember.

So now, on to the giveaway!  One lucky reader will receive a copy of the full My Memories Suite software package.  To enter please go check out the My Memories site and leave me a comment on this post.  The winner will be announced Monday morning (2/11).

As a special to everyone here, My Memories is offering a $10 discount off the purchase of the My Memories Suite Scrapbook software and a $10 coupon for the My Memories store.  To redeem your coupon just enter the code: STMMMS99407