Zen and the Art of Motherhood

This weekend we started a major clean up job brought our own Flood of the Century. In between wringing out carpets and diverting newly created waterways, I was charged with salvaging the family photos.

Now I need to tell you, I love our family pictures. I'm the resident photographer at family gatherings and events and take my job seriously. Unfortunately, I'm not a big scrapbooker. Oh, who am I kidding – I’m not a scrapbooker at all. Ive tried those cutesy crops, but I can never seem to finish more than one page of any album I've started. The task is just too overwhelming for my scattered mind. All my grand plans have amounted to is a sizable collection of paper, stickers and blank sheets sitting in a pile in the basement. Actually its now a big soggy pile.

As a result, we have LOTS of prints sitting around. Some are stored in boxes, but many are not-so-neatly kept on countertops and shelves. These are the ones that were hit the hardest.

Trying to salvage what I could, I spread out all the old pictures on any table, shelf or other flat surface I could find. With years worth of shots, we had pictures everywhere. There were those of my husband and I when we were dating, my oldest as a 4 yr old fairy on Halloween and many, many pictures of the twins from birth to present. There was even a group of our Little Stinker still in the hospital.

Recently I've been feeling like my life has been one mishap after another. But looking at these images, I realized how much genuine fun was woven in -- the parties, the vacations, the goofy poses. Too bad this tends to get obscured in hindsight.

So today, I really love my cheap little camera and the diary its kept. On this day in the life of one stressed out mom, it brought a healthy dose of happy reality. Maybe its time to dust off all that scrapbooking stuff to show off all the fun we've had along the way.