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.

1 Furber House - 4 Furbers = 1 Lonely Mom

Every summer for the last seven years, JP and the kids clear out of Alamo for a few weeks and go to the family beach house in Olympia Washington. That time has come, and they all leave early on Tuesday morning. The time on the beach is great for them, not so great for me, as my full time job keeps me home all summer.

So for ten days (until I meet up with everyone in Sun Valley to celebrate July 4th) I will roam my house alone, missing my family. The problem with a house like mine, is that 50 weeks of the year, it's a fabulous celebration of our happy life together. But two weeks of the year, everything in it makes me miss my family:

Pictures everywhere of the kids in various ages and stages
Kids art hanging on the walls
The map that's marked with all the Furber family travels
The big kitchen table with lots of chairs around it -- when my family's gone, I eat standing up in the kitchen. Too lonely to sit at that giant table without JP and the kids
The drawer full of plastic cups, plates and straws for Katie so she can get her own food when she wants to

Ugh. I'm dreading Tuesday morning, but dreading Tuesday night more when I come home from work to an empty house. I'm not usually a person who relishes the moments when I'm alone in my house (in fact I can't think of very many of those). I like the signs of life my family brings to my house: a little noise, a mess here and there, balls bouncing in the driveway, the occasional power struggle between Jack and Katie. The contrast of all that one day and a clean, quiet, empty house the next. Yuck.

Bon voyage, Furber family. Don't miss me as much as I'll miss you.

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!"

One More Thing Your Children Will Thank You For

I'm a huge fan of displaying photos. I think they add life and personality to my house, especially the candid shots of the kids. My favorite thing to do is to enlarge the close-ups and frame them in 24x36 poster frames. Those little faces are so cute, I just can't get enough of them.

While it's tempting just to rush through the framing projects, this is one place where it's best to plan ahead and take your time. I've learned a lot over the years through trial and error about photo preservation. My friend Clay has also been a good resource for me for photo etiquette, as he has a vast collection of family photos that goes back many years. It takes much more work to do it right, but the results are worth the effort. Here is a list of the highlights:

When framing photos that are valuable to you, use acid free mats and photo safe materials. While you can purchase inexpensive frames just about anywhere, they're rarely the best choice for your pictures. Good sources that I like for well-priced museum quality frames are Pottery Barn and Exposures.

Use reproductions when you can, and store your original photos . I make copies of most of my photos and frame the copies rather than framing the photos themselves. Kinko's is a great resource for really high quality reproductions.

If you choose to frame your photos, rather than reproductions, don't hang them in the sunlight. The only thing that does more damage to an original photo than sunlight is a toddler with a crayon.

Everyone tells you to label your pictures, but no one reminds you to use a photo-safe pen. Using a regular pen can damage a photo beyond repair. And for goodness sake, don't write on the front of your photos with anything!

If you're like me and can't manage to get your photos into archival albums, at least store them in archival storage boxes so they can be protected from dust, light, kids and dogs.

When you hand your photo collection down to your children, be sure to pass on the rules of preservation also. They'll probably roll their eyes, but they'll thank you for it later.

Art Schmart

It's funny that my last post contained so many references to art. The truth is, I have no art in my house. When my husband and I bought our first house, we thought we'd collect some art when we got more established, but we started collecting kids instead.

Now my house is the best kind of gallery, filled with memories of our family's life. We collect photos, maps, cards, art made by our kids, and proudly frame and hang it all. And I mean all.

Some of our very favorite installations are:
Our entry hall that's completely covered in photos of the kids. The gallery has evolved with time, so it's a fun time capsule showing the kids at all ages and stages. We always frame in black frames, with black or white mats, and convert our photos to black and white so we can add to the gallery whenever have something new.

Four 4' square frames in our living room with our favorite pieces by our house artists Andie, Jack and Katie. When presented in the right way, kids' art can look like beautiful pieces of modern art -- great color, and kids seem to have a natural eye for composition.

A world map my husband gave me for Christmas a few years ago. He marked all the places we've visited, together and apart, with different colored pins before he gave it to me. The map has come in mighty handy in our elementary school phase for geography lessons, and the kids love to hear our travel stories. For now anyway.

A big pinboard at the end of the hall where we pin postcards, letters, leaves collected by Katie on her nature walks, stuff from our various roadtips. We add to and subtract from the pinboard all the time, so it's a rotating chronical of our family adventures. It's very fun to stand in front of the pinboard and meditate on our happy family life.

I've resigned myself to the fact that, unless one of my children grows up to be a professional artist, my art collection will remain only sentimental in value. However, I love the confidence my kids get from seeing their photos and art proudly displayed in our house, and the walk to the bedroom each night past the entry hall, the living room, the world map, and the family pinboard is better than any gallery walk I can imagine.