{couple of aha moments}

The other day, Sienna got really frustrated when she was trying to write her name on her drawing. Her N looked like M. She's somewhat of a perfectionist. She thinks she should be able to do things right away. No matter how much I tried to explain things for her, the tears kept coming. So the next day I got this idea. She loves to trace things using my lightbox. I printed her name many times on a sheet of paper, taped another paper on top of that. Turned on the light box and way she went. She was able to practice her name without getting all frustrated. She actually had fun. I taught her how to stop on the points in her letters and she was able to do the letters more sharply.

So there. Fun way for kids to practice writing. :)

ps. If you don't have a lightbox, just make your letters light gray in color and they can trace over that. (I can be quite smart at times :))

I do clean up my desk but few days afterwards, it always ends up looking like this.
Then I totally recommend this book to everyone. Creating Keepsakes' Family History Scrapbooking, author: Becky Higgins.
I get so inspired when I read/browse this book. I like her rule for family history scrapbooking: that it should be about the people and their stories, not about how well and fancy you can scrapbook. I want to keep my family history scrapbooking really simple too. This book really is worth purchasing. She shares lots of great tips and there are ton of layouts to inspire you and get you excited about family history.

Have you asked your parents how they met and have you recorded their story somehow? I like how Becky used both her mom's and dad's version of the story on her layout.

If you haven't been bitten by the family history bug yet, what are you waiting for? :) It is so fun to learn about your family and your ancestors. If you have kids, please make sure you share your life story with them.
Then to my second aha moment of the week... :)
Blogs are so family history! I keep a private, personal blog for our family memories. Sienna will be able to read about our every day lives and see all the pictures. I sure hope nothing ever happens to Blogspot or the Internet. Must remember to backup blogs too regularly. I'm also planning on printing out our family blog every so often.
I have wanted to start writing my personal history for so long now. I have felt somewhat overwhelmed by the largeness of the project. Where to start? How to do it? I realized that I love to blog (obviously). It's so fast and easy to type things here and add pictures too. I realized that I could make my personal history in a blog format. Keep it private so only those very few whom I want to see it will see it. Then when I have 15 minutes here and there, I can jot down stories as they pop into my head. I plan on scanning all my pictures too (there aren't that many, some of you might have too many to do that) and include them on the blog. This is great because I have glued many of my pictures in albums with a glue that contains acid and eventually those pictures will look terrible because of it (way back then I had no idea that glue eats pictures).
Then even more ahas hit me... :)
We have been waiting for a baby album for Jay "forever" now. His mom wanted to scrapbook everything for him but just doesn't have the time to do that. I was thinking that I could start a blog for her where she can atleast write the stories down. I thought that she could start with Jay and then go down in age order and do the same for the other siblings. I'm going to ask her if she'd be willing to do that. If not, maybe I can figure out a way to help her finish that HUGE scrapbook project she has started. I want Jay's baby album. :)
Start bugging your family about family memories. :) It doesn't matter how you decide to save those memories. Please just make sure you do. It's a good idea to start interviewing the oldest relatives first (grandparents for example).
I will continue to keep a blog for Sienna and that'll be my best gift for her. I'm sure it'll be the most precious to her as well. Even this blog might be of interest to Sienna one day. She'll be able to see what else her mommy was interested in than her. :)
Junk doesn't last. Memories do.