Where I Did

I had the BEST weekend!

It did involve sleeping in a bed outfitted head to toe in the Disney Cars motif. But in the morning I didn't have a little someone waking me up by jumping on me and yelling, "It's Good Morning time! Can I watch cartoons?" I'll do that trade-off anytime.

A friend from church hosted an overnight scrapbooking retreat at her mother-in-law's house. ON THE BEACH. The house is gorgeous, and large enough that each person had a whole table to spread out on.

The next best thing? Or maybe it's THE best thing? No children!

I'm not a scrapbooker, but I had a life's worth of pictures to organize, and the lure of having a night away from home ALL BY MYSELF was too great to pass up. I headed over Friday evening about two minutes after Gilberto got home from work and stayed until Saturday night. A whole 24 hours!

Before going digital, all of my pictures went right into a giant cardboard box and gathered dust. I had pictures in that box from my birth all the way through my pregnancy. Luckily we wizened up and got a digital camera right before Gabi was born, but that left 28 years of hard copy prints that I really needed to do something with.

I had planned to organize the box when my maternity leave started. But I ended up watching a lot of TV and eating a lot of ice cream instead. The task just seemed so immense, I was afraid to even start. Especially now that I have a little girl that is more like a Tasmanian Devil. Pictures don't hold up well in whirlwinds.

So over the weekend, I was able to spread out and go through my box. And when I went to bed, I didn't have to put anything away! I finally finished organizing the whole darn thing around lunch time. That's when I got sucked into the world of scrapbooking.

Heaven help me and my bank account.

I'm not planning to scrapbook in the traditional sense, but I wanted to do something special with all of Gabi's professional pictures. I bought a really cool book and some tools from a stash of stuff that was at the house and went to town. Oh boy, those tools were fun! I have a feeling that a lot of the ones I borrowed will end up in my own stash before too long. I got through Gabi's first year before I had to go.

I can't wait to tackle it again, and maybe even finish up her baby book, but it'll have to wait for the next retreat in six months.

When I got home, Gabi was so excited to see me. She jumped into my arms and asked, "Where you DID, mommy? Why you were gone for such a long time?" I knew she'd be fine, but seeing that she and Gilberto survived without me with only minimal damage to the house was such a relief. It means I can go away again!

I snuggled my nose into the crook of her neck and took in a deep breath. I had such a wonderful time hanging with the girls, but coming home to MY girl was by far the best part of the weekend.