You Are Anything But Ordinary

I've written in this space before about documenting life, and not just the happy times. I struggle with this, though, because I don't always remember to take pictures when things are bad.

Today my 6-year old said to me, "Mommy, I wish I was ordinary." What?!? What could she mean by that? She said, "if I was ordinary, I wouldn't have to take all this medicine." This made my heart sink, but I also told her, (after I explained that other kids do take medicine, probably more than we know) that "If you were ordinary, you wouldn't be a Kindergartner who reads chapter books." I kept thinking about last week's Grey's Anatomy episode (hence the title of this blog entry) and how she needs to know how extraordinary she is.

But it also got me thinking about how her doctor appointments and medication have been such a huge part of her young life (hopefully not her whole life, we're hoping to get all of this under control at some point) and how we really haven't documented any of it in her album. How am I supposed to do that? Should I have taken pictures of her getting blood drawn when she was anemic? Should I take a picture of her sitting in one of the doctor's bathrooms trying to pee in one of those stinkin' little "hats" so they can check for another bladder infection? (we've done that more times than I care to count) Should I take a picture of all of her medications lined up on the bathroom counter? All of that seems ridiculous.

Maybe it's something we don't document. Maybe it's something she should just forget about as she gets older. Maybe she needs to be "anything but ordinary" for other reasons.

Our President's Day Weekend

We went to the beach over the long weekend - it was rainy and windy, but just being together as a family was great! The girls played lots of games, spent time with our friends who were staying in their beach house nearby and used their imaginations a lot. When you're at the beach, and can't really spend any time on the actual beach, it's amazing the activities you can come up with.

The one time we did venture down to the sea and sand, we discovered that the tide was so high, we couldn't even make it down the little beach access hill. So we stayed there for a minute, watched the foam and sneaker waves, then it started to rain again and we ran back to the house. What an adventure!

Croppin' Like Crazy!

The last few weeks I've had many opportunities to scrapbook - here are some highlights:

Preparing my scrapbooking bag - had to remove the stow-away:


At Creative Memories' Celebrate Portland
Julie scored on the table space:


Marcy was tired - up too late the night before, Marcy?


Although it seemed like a prime location, those doors behind Sandra created a wind tunnel - and we were frequently picking up scattered paper and pictures.


At my friend Janet's house
Scrapbooking with Janet, her kids and my visiting friend Valerie. Here's part of the destruction:


I also had a great scrapbooking/relaxing weekend at the beach with friends Karen, Janet and Michele. Last Monday night I invaded my friend Marcy's home and we scrapbooked while watching 24 and Heros. All this and I'm still not caught up, but getting there...