Favorite Sweater

In honor of what would have been Mister Rogers' 80th birthday for Stacy Julian's Blog Party, I am wearing my favorite sweater, a zip-front red cardigan. :)We really did have a beautiful day here in Northern Illinois, which is always a welcome surprise in March. It's Easter, and I made the most of this day by taking the opportunity to explain in a little bit more detail to my growing boys why we celebrate Easter and what Jesus' death and resurrection means to us. I am always grateful to be there for those "magic moments" when they are able to understand and appreciate a little bit more truth.

And since I mentioned Stacy Julian's blog party above and I'm hoping that she might actually follow the link that will take her here and see this, I wanted to write just a brief note of thanks to Stacy for sharing her Library of Memories scrapbooking system with me. I have been a scrapbooker for years and years, and when I began to get serious about it, I always found myself a little bit frustrated. While I loved the opportunity to preserve my precious photos and family stories, I felt like I wasn't able to really tell those stories that I most wanted to remember - you know, the ones that you sit around the table and tell over and over. Those stories never seemed to make it into the scrapbooks. I had countless pages about the first day of school or our trip to the apple orchard, but those weren't the real stories that capture our family. Stacy's Big Picture Scrapbooking concept allowed me the freedom to use the photos I want and tell the stories I want and then be able to share these random layouts in my scrapbooks. I enjoy scrapbooking again because I can scrapbook the things and the moments that I think are important, regardless of when it happened in the chronology of our lives. It truly is Photo Freedom. Thank you Stacy. I am grateful for your creativity and your organizational thinking and your ability and willingness to share this with others. Because of the freedom that I found with your system, I was able to create the layout about my son, Jesse, below. This memory never would have found a voice in my choronological albums a few years ago. :)