The Memory Bowl

I want to go see my mom and dad this weekend!!  Meri is coming with me.  

IF she feels better.  She came home from work sick yesterday.  Those daycare kids spread the WORST illnesses...  

So if I don't come down with it, (I avoided her like the plague...) and she's better, then we'll go.  I pretty much threw the over-the-counter meds to her along with the 7-UP and ginger ale and said, "GET BETTER!"  

Mama!  (She calls me that lately) won't you cuddle with me??  

nope.

I was talking to someone the other day and felt like they were cutting me down.  

"I don't take pictures because I want to live in the moment and remember how it was in real life."  

said they.

Well, GOOD for them! :\

  I didn't justify myself at the time because when someone acts holier-than-thou, I get kind of floored and stunned a bit.

And three days later, I'm able to come up with a response...

I guess I take pictures, because my mom has dementia and can't remember those two months when I moved into the garage attic for my freshman year at college because I wanted the "live away from home" experience.  I moved back into the house when it got too cold and after I discovered that bats liked it up there too.

She gets mixed up as to who lived in which house.  I was born when we lived in the blue house with the basement Dad dug out from under it, while we were still living in it.  And when he smoked. and the tree in the back yard where Mark built a treehouse and the branches made a little sink which was perfect for mudpie creations where they forked.  And the made for the toboggan hill in the back!  And we had Lassa, the dog, that got hit by a car.  And the swimming pool that had the big wooden spool for a deck and we would make the current go so fast and then one day we pushed the side over and flooded the yard.  And playing Duck When Cars Come in the ditch.

Mom doesn't remember much of those things.

And now I can't remember who told me that little braggadocios bit the other day,  

so I'm taking pictures, darn it!

Someday, likely, I won't be able to remember those big or little things either.  And photos will be all I'll have to remember the various events of my life and those of the ones I love.  

If you didn't capture it on film, it didn't happen.

No wonder Mom kept multiple baskets of photos tucked under her bed and around the house.

Oh dear... *sob* I better get to work on those scrap books!

AND make more of these blog posts into a book.

2009 is done so far...

Pictoral views

Robb and I at his company Christmas party.  I got paged from work in the middle of it, but thankfully it only took a minute.

Prime rib with horseradish?  Yes please!!!

 I have NO pictures of the cookie making morning at Ada's...  The camera was there the whole time too!  ARGGHH...

Then our trip to college town.  Leon slept almost the whole way, waking up 30 minutes from our destination... angry...  Until we plugged in some VeggieTale movies.

The view from the upstairs hall of Maddy's dorm.  SO pretty there with all the snow!!!

 

After dinner, I wanted to take some photos of downtown.  Not exactly like the photo in the travel guide, but pretty close.  I wasn't able to capture it with my camera on a full stomach.

 

Heading to the Chapel for the concert a little later.  Leon got away from us and ran ahead.

 

About 5 different choir groups.  This is just over half.  Maddy is one of the "red shirts", I mean robes.  The program said that we weren't supposed to use any recording devices so I had to sneak this photo in...

Maddy and her roommate Leah.

 

They're like twins!  The dresses they're wearing are the exact same dress but different colors.  They even Thrift shop together!  And of course a group shot!  

What a great time, but it was too short...  Then back to napping in the car on the way home.  Meri sat up front so she could keep Robb awake, but was asleep within 30 minutes of campus.

From midnight until 1:30am or so, I kept him awake by poking him in the back.  That did the trick!

And as I mentioned, at least a couple more days off would be swell...

Like Father, Like Son...

When this little boys father was in school and it was picture day, I can't tell you how many of those photos came home with a thin lipped smile.  In fact, one year, on the little photo packet with the payment, I wrote a note for the photographer that I wanted to see teeth...  He laughed about it and Ryan smiled however he wanted to anyway...  

They both have beautiful smiles. with. teeth...

But nowadays whenever they see a camera, this is what they do.  

 

Apparently it's genetics...

Or just that Leon now has 5 teeth and he likes to grind them together...  eewwwweeee....

My random life in pictures...

My mom & dad's old house that they're downsizing from. It used to be a one room school house that they remodeled inside and made it into a 2 bedroom home. Full basement with a basketball hoop! and the "dungeon" storm cellar with a ladder and submarine type door to escape in case a tornado takes the school away. It was flooded as usual and Meri brought home 3 swimmy frogs from it. She left them in my car that night when we got home late and they escaped. So now we've got either a frog family living somewhere under the seats or well... the alternative of that... in.my.car.

As I said... the flooding after the rains makes their property into a lakefront home...

On the way back home, Meri & I stopped at a rest area and she snapped some pics of the sunset. Do you see the birds above the trees? Good thing her fear of The Birds movie has worn off!

Fun times in the kitchen with the pups. You know... between puppy potty breaks, which they don't warn you about...Meri wearing her new puppy vest. Unfortunately you have to lay down to wear it properly.

Ryan oohing and ahhing over the puppies. He hadn't seen them in a couple weeks and said he was "dying of cuteness"! He has ALL of them in his lap.

Memorial Day service at the cemetary! Maddy's high school band played and sounded great despite the heat and uniforms.Afternoon with the babes on the lawn. Be careful when you sit!Have a wonderful weekend everyone! Big festival weekend in our towns and I'm SO Looking forward to kumla and cotton candy!

Dad's were babies once...

My parents are in the middle of a big big move. Only 20 minutes away from where they live now, but they have so much stuff and memories that it will take a long long time to get everything pared down and moved....So anyway, I was sorting several boxes of miscellaneous stuff. Putting photos to be sorted AFTER the move into one box and memorabilia paper stuff in another for a scrapbook someday.
I came across these of my dad and Grandma when he was 7 months old.
As I'm looking through the series, I suddenly kind of jumped when I saw this one...

I had to show it to Dad and have him tell me the story behind it! But he didn't know and looked really confused. He's trying to figure out if that was his dad hiding in the bushes after working on the farm or if he's being kidnapped...

Wow... They're never going to get moved if I keep getting bogged down with these adorable little pics!

Now for a brief commercial break.

A lot of you guys have been impressed with my collage'ing talents.

And Thank you very much! :)

However... I'm not the talent behind the collages. I don't have enough time in the day to line up a photo to fit in an exact spot. Who does? Martha Stewart? Probably.

Anyway, I use the Picasa program that I downloaded for free from download.com. My husband trusts this site and so do I. If you want to go to the actual link for Picasa on their site click HERE. When you install this program, it will go through all the photos on your computer and arrange them in date order.SO COOL.

Then you can just scroll down through all your photos chronologically and find the one you're looking for without hunting through the billions of folders individually! It will let you manipulate photos too. Brighten, sharpen, crop, red eye reduction, etc.

The really neat function that you've been drooling over is this... Start by just clicking on any photo you want in a collage, then hold the control key and click on any others you want to add. You know how to do this! Then click on the collage button at the bottom of the screen! Voila! It's a collage! And then you can tell it what style of collage you want. Mosaic, thumbnail, scattered pictures, etc. And if you want a different color behind them. You can move the pictures around, turn them, enlarge them, whatever...

Anyway. That's my secret. SSH!! No wait. Go ahead and tell someone if you like it!

Fine print... I do not get paid for this, but I should huh?