If The Feds Come Knocking

Are you one of the women who spends hours making beautiful baby books for your young?  Or are you one of the women who spends hours making fun of the women who make beautiful baby books for the young even though you secretly wish you had the organizational and creative skills to pull off such a book?

I was a latter, then became a former-wannabe.  I’m now somewhere in the middle.  I bought a bunch of pre-creative books (meaning they do all of the creative part for you), so now all I have to do is print pics and plunk them down in the books. And that’s just what I do – every twelve to eighteen months.

Both boys love their books, particularly Ezra, who can be found fairly regularly curled up on the couch admiring his life.  I’m rather proud of the books myself.  I add a few of those goofy stickers from Michaels, glue in a few self-portraits and work samples, and all of a sudden I think, “Man, my kids are lucky to have me.  Look at what a wonderful life I’ve preserved right here for their future wives to ooh and aah over!”

In case you’re interested, I used the Baby Chronicles book for a baby book, cut the pages out and added them to a three-ring binder so that I could add sleeves of pictures as well. When they outgrew those, I went to Michael’s, bought 12″ x 12″ scrapbooks, and filled them with picture sleeves and pre-printed sleeves from Creative Memories.

I just ordered 450 pictures from the last twenty-one months.  (Like everything else, scrapbooks took a back seat to homeschool this year.)  Tomorrow I’m headed to Virginia, where my sister and I will spend a very long day trying to catch up.  And even if I’m tempted to quit halfway through the day, I will persevere because in my letter to the school district requesting permission to homeschool, I needed to describe how I would evaluate the boys progress and how I would prove this to the district should they become interested in the welfare of my boys.  I wrote that, “dated work samples will be submitted upon request.”

So now, not only are these scrapbooks proof that I am a loving mother.  They are going to serve as documentation should the Feds come knocking.