Another school year is over, and this was a big one for the Furbers: Jack graduated from elementary school, Katie finished kindergarten, and Andie graduated from middle school. With the end of each school year at my house comes a variety of trophies, certificates, awards, and really cute art, and along with all that comes the challenge of storing and displaying it all. JP and I developed a system that has held up very well over the years.

When Andie started school (9 years ago!) we bought 20 26"x12" flat files and started filling them up with mementos for each year.
Now each child has a box for each school year that contains all the good stuff we want to keep. Some have parts of halloween costumes (like the giant white sunglasses Jack wore with his Willy Wonka costume), some have party invitations, pictures of friends, tickets to plays, programs from performances.

Because all three of our children have gone to the same elementary school, it's especially fun to compare the school projects they've all done -- we now have a complete Furber set of the Old Lady Who Swallowed the Fly from the Rancho Romero Kindergarten curriculum.

Every once in a while I sit down with a stack of them and try to clean out the contents, thinking the kids can't possibly want all this when they move out and have to store it all themselves. But then I get lost in the memories brought back by each little item, and I keep it all.

That's Going in the Scrapbook!

Since we bought our condo in Sun Valley five years ago, we've had a most fabulous wall-mount scrapbook in the family room there.


When I bought it, my husband rolled his eyes and sighed that famous big Furber sigh. He knew if he didn't find the studs and hang it up for me within 60 minutes of its' arrival, I'd do it myself. (See post "My Digital Camera Ate My Pictures" 6/12/08 to see how these things usually go down in the Furber house.)

Now, five years later, we've faithfully chronicled all but one of our visits to Sun Valley. (For that visit that doesn't have a page in the scrapbook, we did manage to tape a ziploc bag full of momentos in the proper place so we'd at least remember we were here.)
Every time we visit, we look back at the previous visits and remember:

Jack and Andie's fly fishing lessons -- Andie caught several fish, Jack didn't catch any.
The time Jack, Andie and I walked all the way down Baldy
Katie's first words spoken while on a visit to Sun Valley: Jack, up, down, cold, boots
The time JP and I took the kids to the Opera House to see the new Warren Miller movie and they thought it was the most boring movie they'd ever seen. Kids these days.
The time my sister Lisa and I visited for a girl's weekend, drank too many Wolfaritas at the Pioneer Saloon and had to leave our peacock blue rental car in town and walk home.
The time JP blew his knee out trying to teach Jack how to ski on Dollar, and we spent the rest of the trip making up great stories about how he got hurt. Our favorite: he was doing a helicopter off Christmas Bowl cornice and crashed into the Governator.
The time we stopped at the Arby's drive thru on one of our road trips and the cashier greeted us with "Welcome to Arby's. We're out of beef."
Our dinner at the Pio that was a shrieking, food throwing, barfing spectacle.
The time I set Jack's kids menu on fire by accident at Rico's.
The bedtimes of every Furber family member for every New Year's Eve we've spent here: JP's usually first, Andie's usually last.
Me carrying Katie's padded potty seat through a truck stop in Elko on one of our road trips so Katie could be comfy during our potty stop.

Good times all. And now, whenever something funny or memorable happens, we put it in the scrapbook. Like today when I wiped out and scraped my face on the cat track, the kids yelled right away "That's going in the scrapbook!"