224 of 365 memories....a picture says a thousand words

Once upon a time I use to take LOTS of pictures, label them and put them in order in albums. Every album had a number (Roman numerals of course) and every number was labeled on the outside spine of the album.




And then I fell into the stereotypical mother of 3, my sanity and patience for categorizing everything was lost with my first born.




We have baskets upon baskets of pictures. I have organized them so many times only to have them messed up yet again.




I have not put pictures in any type of order since the year 2000. That would be right around the time Jakob (my 2nd child) was one year old. 9 years have gone by and one more child and I still haven't found the strength to categorize these years.




I LOVE all my pictures, the one's that are printed are sacred. They can not be replaced. I know I need to purge and clean them out but for some reason I can't.




My oldest son has been working on a family tree project for his Spanish class. Last night we had to go through old pictures and scan them for his project. While I was thumbing through those memories, I was amazed at how certain pictures transported me right back to that moment in our lives.



One picture in particular had me teary eyed.....

The woman that took this picture was an emotional wreck and very good at putting on a smile on every one's face. I had a newly 6 year old, newly 3 year old, a newborn and a husband that was 3 years into climbing the corporate ladder. Late nights and lots of business travels left me at 26 years old wondering if I was just a baby making machine and if my 3 year old son was ever going to know that slamming his head into the concrete floor was eventually REALLY going to hurt.

I remember this day like it was yesterday. My only outings during this week were to bring Alex to and from school. Jakob had been OVERLY EVERYTHING that week. And Brian had been gone for 2 days. By the end of the week, I was done. We had this Tiger Cub meeting for Alex and I was SO glad that my back up (my hubby) was home. Right before this picture I was carrying Jakob and Brian was carrying Hannah in the car seat. Jakob was rattling on about something (he had been a little shit that day, into everything, crying for no reason except that he could breathe and banging his head into EVERYTHING, FUN FUN :) And then he looked at my face grabbed my cheeks and blew a raspberry on my cheek.

I laughed so hard, I almost dropped him. That was (and still is) my Jakey boy. A pain in the butt sometimes but has so much love and spunk in him , that I don't think he knows how to control it all.

I remember a short time after this, really trying to make myself realize how very special and DIFFERENT all 3 of my children were. Each one was never going to be the other one and that these differences are what make them THEM.

As they're growing into the young men and young woman that they are, I feel myself rediscovering them all over again.

This time, I'm older, I have more patience and more understanding about them because I know them better. Apart of me misses that scared 26 year old that had just been handed her 3 child, a girl for goodness sake, what do you do with a girl, after 2 boys!

I quickly realized, you love and ADORE her just like the other two.

Even when you don't realize your doing it.....

Enjoy some of our "old" memories

the day we brought Hannah home from the hospital,

Alex was a proud big brother for the 2nd time!

my 3 monkeys!

Hannah has nothing to worry about with theses 2!!

In my years of sleep deprivation, mysterious wet spots on the carpet, bathroom breaks just so I could regain my sanity and sippy cups magically disappearing into the sofa, I never thought one day I would look back and miss theses days SO MUCH!!

Thanks for letting me ramble :)