I was just at my car loading groceries this morning when a car pulled up behind me. The man driving was apologetic for disturbing my morning but was in need of help paying his power bill as his payday wasn’t until the 8th. He held out his power ‘pay in advance’ card for me to see but it wasn’t necessary. I could hear the desperation in his voice and see it in his eyes as he described his power being turned off that morning. Visions from the movie “The Pursuit of Happyness” flooded my mind. I could see a small family at home with no A/C, no lights and no refrigerator. I told him I rarely carried cash but he was welcome to whatever I may have. I was so grateful to have something in my wallet. It was less than $10.00 but it was something; his gratitude was overwhelming. I just wished it could have been more. I wished him the best and he drove away.

I spent the drive home thinking about all the people who struggle to make ends meet every day. Those that fall short on funds to pay a power bill by three or four days before pay day. I thought about how fun it would be to call up the power company, tell them to pick five residential customers who were in line for getting their power cut and anonymously filling their account for another month. I thought of the concept of random acts of kindness and how important they are. I even thought about starting a blog or other publication about it - something that shared little acts of kindness shown around the world. It seems like the news is so full of all the terrible things that it’s no wonder so many are guarded with more than their wallets these days.

There are many who would call me a fool. A fool for sharing my substance with one who asked. After all, how can you ever be really sure they are honest or aren’t going to misuse your generosity? To those, I simply say so what if they do. They have a need, I have the ability to give them something. Who am I to judge the validity of a hand asking for help? I know what it’s like to go through hard times, to pray for a break. In short, a simple helping hand once and a while. Today I am thinking I need to stash a $50 bill in my car or wallet just for such occasions. I was actually kicking myself as I began driving home that I didn’t march the gentleman back inside the store to the bank inside and help him put at least a couple week’s worth of power on his card. Next time, I’ll be better prepared.

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Last week was nearly a bust with me catching a cold. But I did get another photo day in there, just didn’t get around to posting it, so I’ll share today’s work with last week’s day eight.

Project stats: 975 photos, day 9 is my highest day for total scans at one time coming in at 187. All remaining photos not yet in albums to be scanned are now in two folder in front of my one drawer. This is HUGE progress as I began with two drawers!

My control sheet is moving into spreadsheet form. It’s interesting to note how much I scan on specific days, as well as seeing about how many photos I have accumulated thus far for each year. This will be even more interesting when I hit phase two of this project which is getting all the new digital photos in paper backup. I wonder if I took more pictures once I went digital or if I’ve always kept about the same pace over the years?

At any rate, I wanted to share that today I am struck again by how quickly time passes. I’ve been scanning a lot of baby photos of my little guy. Something I’m especially grateful for given that his birth grandmother was able to sit with me Sunday night and it was so easy to share these! As I scanned photos today I saw glimpses into the not so distant future of a teenage daughter and son. How grateful I am for the time we have had to enjoy them and the time we have yet!

In honor of capturing some big growth insights, I’m sharing these two pictures for today’s project picks:

Both pictures are from just 4 years ago in 2004, which doesn’t seem so long ago but compared to how they look today it’s a lot! In 4 more years I’ll have two kids in double digits age wise! That hardly seems possible, but there it is.

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To the makers of Tylenol Night Time Sore Throat and Cold medicine which gave me a much needed night of sleep last night. Also to my wonderful hubby who brought it home for me AND took care of the kids this morning so I could stay in bed and stretch every last hour of restful sleep!

I think I can make it through the weekend now.

Today was a happy dance day. I made it all the way through my first file drawer of pictures! I scanned almost 150 pictures today bringing the total to date 720. I can see some light at the end of this project tunnel as it’s really fun! I’m already visualizing new projects that will be so easily put together now that I can see having ALL my photos organized digitally. I’m so glad I haven’t given in to the burnt out bug on this. I love that I can really see progress with each step and each day I put some effort into it. It’s also nice for me knowing that I can do this much in only an hour or so a day. I’ve spent less than 10 hours total over 7 different days and I have over 700 photos to show for it and organized digital files to boot. Did I mention happy dance day?

So here’s today’s pick:

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Family Organizing Positive Impact Success

I was never big on watching news when we had TV so I can’t blame that for me falling even more out of touch with current events. However, I did manage to catch tidbits here and there so without that I really have fallen off the radar relying on my husband to keep me afloat of important things. But the Olympics renewed some interest for me to keep up with things myself so this week I went out and subscribed to a national and local RSS news feed. Just one of each (thank heaven because both bring in easily 50 stories a day each!) and it’s interesting to see what I’ve been missing.

Like today I learned:

I need to save a few more pennies: Maker of Snickers and M&Ms is raising prices.
Just when you think you know it all: Whopping fish declared new species.
Mother’s love can be taken too far: Surrogate mom, 61, gives birth to own grandkid.

And local news is stellar too adding to my knowledge base with things like:

Why I want to drive to school to pick up kids today: Scorching, near record-breaking heat Friday.
Keeping your hands to yourself never grows old: Woman arrested after hitting boy, 6, in head at Tempe Marketplace.
Neither does self-control: Woman attacked officers at kids’ football game

Now I remember why I didn’t watch the news. *snort* But here’s my all time favorite story so far today:
Typo vigilantes answer to the letter of the law. And not just because the title it so witty, but clearly some news worthy crime can be…what’s the word - educational? *giggle*

I hope these things make someone else’s day as enlightening as mine.

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I’m nearly to the end of my first file drawer of scanning and I need that success because it’s harder and harder to keep myself scanning! Getting going is the hard part, once it’s rolling it’s always fun seeing old pictures and reliving great memories. It’s a great reminder of how important persistence and pieces of success are to completing any big project.

I scanned several today of events from the years 1993-2002. Here’s today’s pick from 1995:

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I was introduce to Julian Beever via e-mail this morning. I didn’t know anything about him or his works but I can say I’m truly inspired!

This one of a Coke bottle was one of my favorites! Is he not amazing?!

This is definitely one of the best things about the technology of sharing things online. Go visit the links and then tell me which are your favorites!

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I forget how hectic Mondays are for me as it takes all morning to catch up on weekend e-mails and blogs for those who don’t take weekend breaks. So I didn’t get to this project until after lunch today, but I’m glad I made myself do a little more. I scanned another 93 photos today bringing my total for 5 days of scanning to roughly 500.

Today’s pick includes two from the same set:

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Family Sharing Motherhood Memories

If I had a way of recording the “just missed that moment with my camera” I think I’d have a book! *giggle* I looked out the window Saturday morning and saw the perfect picture of father and son working on the pool together. I wanted to snap a picture of it to share but but the time I got the camera they’d both moved. *murmur* I wish there were a camera implant in my eye so I could just tell my brain to capture a moment! Some of the best pictures are the ones that you’re simply not ready to take when the opportunity presents itself. But I digress, the point is I wanted that picture not just for the archives but also to blog our weekend as it was such a great general capture of our Saturday mornings which are usually filled with yard and pool maintenance, a late morning shower and some lunch related outing.

Thankfully my efforts of keeping my son home from school on Friday when his immune system appeared to be weakening was a good call. We were able to avoid any sickness and enjoy our weekend - yay!

One of our new favorite places to go is the San Tan Village. It’s a new development that combines such an odd and fun combination of dining, entertainment and shopping. It feels a little like walking down 5th Avenue in NYC (except with misters and a fraction of the people) but combines so many other fun elements in a new and unique way. I’ll have to take some more pictures next time we’re there (another missed moment eh?!) So we went to a new place for lunch called Cantina Laredo, which was great and allowed us to take in some fun Olympic events, then hit the theater for the movie and ended the afternoon outing with a stop at Best Buy to purchase the much longed for:

I wanted to share a picture of the family rock band hard at play but I again missed a few of my key photo moments so I’ll have to repent for that later. Suffice it to say I greatly enjoyed watching all three of them concentrate like crazy and rock out. Blake’s been holding out on me. *snicker*

We also got to pick up my old computer (thank you warranty!) so I can add that to the success list. It seems a little sluggish and slow but at least it’s working right and devoid of blue screens and extreme fan volume. I’m happy to have another computer for the kids to use. I’m a little stingy with mine. *snort* It was indeed a hardware failure and the paperwork says they changed the mother board. Darn thing wasn’t even three years old. Oh well, at least we got it fixed without paying for repairs. I don’t know how people do it though because they had my computer for just over 2 weeks. If I hadn’t had a replacement I’d have died for sure! I couldn’t live that long without my computer. It made me wonder if they just assume customers will have other computers to use while they take their time repairing them? I still love my Mac and have adjusted very easily. The right click and mouse wheel actually felt clunky and weird yesterday!

I even stole a few minutes to update some more of my shared files for teaching children yesterday. I missed a Sunday afternoon nap but all in all it was a great weekend.

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Here’s today’s pick: NYC ‘01

Today I’m really glad I did a little organizing with my photos in the past. When I thought I’d be really disciplined about doing scrapbook pages I would group photos in sets that made sense for pages. A single file folder was much too big for some of these small groupings so I started folding over pieces of paper and just labeling the front with the title. Then I’d drop those into folders by year. This makes my scanning so much easier because there’s less guess work about what year a set go with. I was even smart enough to put the year on a few of them.

Although this system didn’t help me actually get around to doing the pages I originally intended, it did make this scanning process easier.

The list I’ve been using to track my numbers of files is really basic but having it today sure made it easier to pick up and go. The numbers on the left are the year, the ones on the right are the last number I used to create file names. Today I added new numbers on the right of the line for today’s efforts with the date and total scanned items at the top again. The point of tracking the number scanned this way is to know how many photo albums I need to house all my photos. I’m up to about 430 scanned photos after this morning. It’s a good breaking point for the weekend.

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