Bye Bye Summer Memories Time Line!

Last week the east coast suffered a horrible, devastating hurricane, Hurricane Sandy.

Before reading this post, please remember all of those who are still reeling from this event. Although we were not personally affected, as you’ll read below, so many we know were.

If you would like to donate, I have linked to the American Red Cross and their Hurricane relief site.
You can click here to make your own donation.

Thank you, and enjoy today’s post.

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Our Summer Time Line has been up for a long, long time.

You all remember our Summer Memories Time Line, right?

Started in June, finished in August.

It’s November.

I was thrilled with how the Time Line came out. I loved the pictures, I loved re-living my favorite season.

Til about October. Early October.

“I’m going to take the Time Line down soon,” I’d say.

“No, don’t! I still like looking at it,” someone 13 and under would say.

“I still like remembering all the fun things we did,” another would say.

So I’d leave it longer.

Caroline was 12 when the Time Line went up and 13 by the time it came down.

Caroline’s birthday came at the end of October. The cards went up on the wall, above the Time Line. Halloween decorations went up, around the Time Line.

Christmas was coming, cards would be coming in a matter of weeks. I knew I had to take the Time Line down. I wasn’t going to throw it out, I don’t throw anything out. Ever. I was going to save it.

Then came Hurricane Sandy.

I was wandering around Target the day before the storm, picking up canned goods and thinking about the possibility of being out of electricity for what they said could be weeks.

With an S.

Weeks.

I tried not to think about that possibility and tried instead, to think of what kinds of things one could do with three kids with no power, for weeks, or even a few days.

I wandered through their scrapbooking aisle, and that’s when it hit me, like a ton of canned goods.

The Time Line!! We could scrapbook the Time Line. Together. I’d let them do it, each creating their own pages, using the photos I’d printed for it and the little papers they’d written the events on.

Being a former Stampin’ Up! demonstrator, I had tons of empty scrapbooks and probably thousands of pieces of paper to use.

Thousands.

With an S.

It was perfect.

We never lost power.

Not even a day. Without an S.

They watched TV for two days straight, while we prepared on Sunday and while I typed like crazy on Monday for an extra-early deadline, with us thinking that any minute the lights would go off and I’d whip out my plan.

But, then Tuesday came, the day after the storm ended. Lights on but no school again. Thankfully we were unscathed by the storm.

So many papers to choose from!

This would definitely be the day. We went out during the day and ran some errands and then after lunch but before dinner, we cleared off the dining room table (or at least one end of it) and brought up all the scrapbooking stuff.

I picked out an album. The kids started looking through all the designer papers.

Lots to choose from.

And I started. I began to dis-assemble the Time Line.

Piece by piece, and they were fine with it. I’d give each child a page to work on and give them all the pictures and the posted events to go with it.

Everyone knew the pages they wanted to work on before we started.

They went to town. It was totally their project. I let them put the pictures on the pages they wanted, in the order they wanted. No direction from me.

That’s really big for me you know. I’m a director. I like things to be a certain way usually, but I really liked that this was all them. They owned it.

In about an hour and a half we were done.

The Time Line was empty, ripped off the wall and thrown away and our Summer Memories Scrapbook was done, filled with the events and photos showing our summer of 2012, preserved forever, in their writing, their words. There’s even room in the book for next year’s Time Line photos.

Total independence. Very hard for me, great for them.

Because we already decided, we’re doing it again next summer.

And soon, we’ll have thousands of memories of our summers.

Thousands.

With an S.

All gone!

So proud of all the pages the girls created!

Tags: free things to do, Jennifer L. Cowart, kids, motherhood, scrapbooking, scrapbooking with kids, Stampin' Up, summer, summer memories time line