Progress!!!

On 9/17/2009, I posted about Photo Freedom and my progress in organizing ALL of my photos. Now that the photos are all organized in chronological order, I am ready to work on the scrapbooks! The next step was to choose the scrapbooks and I am buying a couple each time they are 50% off at Hobby Lobby to make sure I have enough to finish the project. I took all of the pages I had already made out of their current albums and organized them by child. Then I sorted them out by year. It is actually much easier to sort by decade and then year as I get to that point. For example, I sorted out Brian by the 80's then 90's then 2000+. I am still working in the 80's, so the other decades are still in stacks.

I am so excited to report that I have completed the first of Brian's albums! It covers June 1986 to August 1988! 52 pages in all. I have a feeling that the other boys will be lucky to cover 5 years in their first album! Sad, I know, but Brian was the first. I had more time to take pictures and it was all so new. Once Christopher came along, I was so busy trying to juggle two kids that I didn't remember to take pictures. Here is part of his first album:
It is really fun to work on this project and reminisce about when the boys were little. However, this also means that I am finishing up pages with my ex-husband on them. I would never leave him out of their scrapbooks, because this is about their lives. But it is sometimes hard to resist doing funny things--like adding the pilgrim hat to him in the Thanksgiving layout about! In my defense, that layout was done about 10 years ago when he was being a constant pain in my life!

Now that I am up to August 1988, that means that Christopher will be born in 3 months. So, I got out another album and sorted out Christopher's pages, and I will be keeping track of the layouts and photos for 2 albums. That is 1988 and 1989 for each boy set out in front of their albums, and Brian's completed first album in front:

The 1990's will be sorted out by year once I get done with 1989. As I get to 1991, we will add another album and stack of layouts for Derrick and then 1993 will add another for Mark. I am saving the album for Geno and me to start after I finish all of the boys. I will also be making albums for the grandkids, but I will be finished with Brian in March 2006 and Zachary came along in August 2006. Luckily, I will only have 4 maximum going at one time.

Brian and Christopher's 1990's completed layouts:
Here are the completed layouts for Brian and Christopher for 2000+:
Yes Brian's stack on the right is way bigger than Christopher's, but I have an explanation for that! I focused on Brian before his graduation from high school hoping to get the albums done to display for his graduation. Obviously I didn't succeed, but that is way less work I will have to do for him when I get to those years in the photos :o)

When each album is completed, I add a tab on the side with the child's name and dates covered in the album and then 4 small photos on the front that are from that same time period. My plan was to then give the boys their albums when they are settled in their adult lives and appreciate all of the work that went into these, but I really like how they look on that big shelf in my living room. They may just have to wait until I die before they get them!