Photobooks!

Back in 2014, the weight of thousands of digital pictures with none printed was weighing down on me. Mom guilt was in full force and I started thinking I had to get the kids pictures into books or I would never get them done. Hailey was nine at the time and the thought of doing it all was really overwhelming. But, I knew if I went through and got them organized I'd be able to do it.

I began by going through all my pics and grouping them into each kid and then grouping them by year.  I researched different photo book websites and I chose to go with blurb.com. I downloaded their photo book program Booksmart and got to work. I decided to do two years per book and print them out for birthdays and Christmas until I got them caught up. It took me about two months to get everything pretty close to being printed. It was quite bit of money to print them so I decided to wait and do one at a time.

I had six printed and loved them but I didn't do anymore at the time.  When we packed up for Hawaii we stored our computer.  While in Hawaii I worried the whole time that all my work was going to get lost. In fact, one of the first things I did when we got home was turn on the computer and check to see if everything was there.  Much to my relief, everything was!!!  I decided I didn't care how much it cost I was going to get my books ordered so I could have some peace of mind!

I had to do final edits to all of the old books and do the past two years I hadn't begun.  It took me about a month and quite a few hours to get them ready. I got my last bunch of books on Monday. I am so happy to have these actual books in my hands and not just stored on my computer.  Blurb.com does an amazing job and has great quality books and thankfully they had 40% off coupons.

I've printed eighteen total and have two more almost ready but I can't quite finish them until the kids birthdays. It's so fun to look through all these pictures and remember many good times.

I was talking to my 95 year old Grandma Christensen in July.  She talked about how she doesn't have any pictures from before she was about thirteen. She remembered her Mom having a picture of her at about age seven and was excited for when she could have it.  When her mother got older and moved in with her she thought she'd find the picture and put it with her things.  But, when she went through everything she wasn't ever able to find it.  She wished she had more pictures of herself as a child.

It made me think about how blessed we are to have the ease of digital photos and an almost endless amount of storage space for them. Along with that countless companies are willing to print these pics in about anyway a person can think of.  It made me realize once again that I am responsible for getting these pictures printed for the kids so they have the photos to look at whenever they want and hopefully keep their memories from childhood fresh in their minds.  Whew!  The Mom guild is beginning to subside in this area of life and it feels good.  HAHA!