A Delightful Scrapbook from my Precious Friend

I actually received this scrapbook

from my friend Barb for my birthday in August.
I've been meaning to photograph it for quite some time. Barb and I have been friends
since 1974. We met in the third grade when our family moved from Missouri to Kansas.
We did everything together, noble and ignoble.

We lost touch during our teens, but reconnected when my secondborn was a baby. Through every life season since then, we've been friends. She knows me better than anyone except for my husband, and loves me anyway.

So you can imagine how much it meant to me that she would catalog our friendship in pictures and words by making a scrapbook for me. It was a complete surprise, and I cherish it. I could have taken all the page protectors off to avoid the glare on some of these shots, but I didn't. Sometimes you just gotta "get 'er done," and forget trying to be all perfect about it.



The intro page. So clever.
We make each other smile.
I visited her in 1989, the first time we'd seen each other since middle school.
Ben was 18 months old here, Sarah 5 months. And I was... a lot younger. Okay,
23 to be exact! And a lot more energetic. Did my hubby and I really travel halfway
across America with these two little diapered squirmies, and live to tell about it?

We met up again a couple years later, in Independence, MO, at a little zoo. By this time, Paul and I
had had our third child, Stephen, an adorable curly towhead with big blue eyes. Sarah is sour-faced in these pictures because she was kind of scared of those enormous baboons. Wouldn't you be if you were her size? Barb's two little boys were so stinkin' cute. (Still are.)
Many year later, for my birthday, she flew to my house to surprise me. She
had said my present would be a few weeks late, but it would arrive. She didn't
say that SHE was the gift and would arrive on October 1st. My daughter did a GREAT
job keeping it all hush-hush.

Barb adored my baby, and how could she not? Look at him. What a ham, tromping
around in his daddy's shoes.
It's uncanny how much alike Barb and I. When I flew out to Kansas last summer, I was wearing a lime green T-shirt and jeans on the flight. There was no way she knew that, but guess what she was wearing when she picked me up from the Wichita airport? We laughed about our "ESP" and then headed from the airport to visit our favorite third grade teacher and her husband.

They've been married over 65 years, sweethearts forever. Their anniversary happens to fall on my birthday.

It was the summer I turned 45 and Barb turned 46. I love to tease her that I'm
soooooooo much younger! Here we are trying to get a decent shot of ourselves
while stopping on the side of a dirt road to pluck sunflowers. The Kansas wind
never quits except right before a tornado. Ever had one of those self-photo shoots that takes you about 283 tries, wishing your arm was longer and your nose shorter, but just as you think you've got an okay pose--WHOOSH!~ wind in the face again! We were so flustered we got giddy!

She taught me to make sandhill plum jelly. It's the best! What I thought was
funny was that, once again, we both got dressed in the same color AGAIN before
seeing what the other was wearing. We have such similar tastes that we even
bought the same cream-colored eyelet bedspread 1200 miles apart.
A much-needed girls' getaway refreshed us both.

Isn't she cute?
I had to have rhubarb pie. Hadn't eaten any since I was a girl in KS.
We spend a way-too-short but gloriously warm afternoon at Wilson Lake.
I sat and journaled while she read a book. I couldn't get over the beautiful blue topaz
colored water.
And she patiently waited while I took pictures of fence posts, old barns, and
windmills, and those beloved sunflowers.


A friendship like ours is rare and wonderful. I am richly blessed. Even though we both have had many friends in our lives, of course, there is something inexpressibly comfortable
about having someone with whom you can be completely honest, ugly, foolish, ornery, mischievous, hormonally whacko, and still be loved for who you are.

Thanks, Barb, for being that kind of friend, and for making this scrapbook for me. It
is one of the many ways you've demonstrated your love to me in the past 38 years.

Scrapbooking (Dis)Organization

Today both of my feet are in pain, but I think I can manage to start organizing my tiny (7x8) office from a chair.

But the kind of help I need most will come from organized scrapbookers.

I have been at it since 1995, and keep trying new systems. I have plenty of archival safe photo boxes in use and more at the ready. I have Rubbermaid totes with hanging files, which sometimes I've used for just organizing various papers, and sometimes for holding entire layouts (memorabilia, photos, paper, embellishments).

I have a huge binder full of stickers, a plastic magazine-holder thingy for assorted papers. Just outside the office is a corner at the bottom of the basement steps. In this corner is a triangular cabinet. It reminds me of a pie-shaped Murphy bed, because when the desk surface is not in use, you can flip it up and snap-lock it away. Very cool. When the "desk" is down, it's good for sewing or scrapbooking. Shelves in the lower half of the Murphy desk currently house my sewing machine, box of scrap fabric, a Creative Memories carryall bag (which is NOT all that handy at home). The shelves in the top half contain binders for stickers and open boxes for gadgets.

So what's the problem?

When I get inspired AND have time to scrapbook all at once, I seldom have everything I want all in one place. Photos are still on the computer, I have to pull everything out to see what I have, and only a few boxes are in chronological order.

Inefficiency, I guess, is the problem.

Can you who do scrapbooks offer suggestions that will make the 'getting started' each time more enjoyable? I know the solution must be easier than I'm making it.

PS This office does triple duty for three hobbies: computer, scrapbook, and guitars.
There is a doorless closet with 2 large shelves above where the guitars sit. Lots of wall space. The end result I'm going for is #1 functional and #2 an aesthetically pleasing "his and her" space.

Whether you scrapbook or not, you can offer organizational tips! And while you're at it, please pray God's healing on my feet. I feel like I'm always asking for prayer, but then again, lately I feel like my body's been falling apart one member at a time.

Best Tangible Gift Ever--Revealed

She had been planning this since July.
She kept it secret until Christmas Day.
She spent over 100 dollars on supplies.
She emailed over 25 women to help her.
She made deadlines and extended them for those women. She directed their snail mail to my mom's address.
She spent the night with a friend who's an expert at this kind of gift-making.
She and that friend (Hannah, friends since birth) got little sleep that night, working from dinnertime till around 2 a.m.
She worked on it at my mother's house for hours and hours.
She fooled me into thinking it was a quilt or something like that she was hiding.
She wrapped it in a big, big box under a squishy pillow to add to the trickery on Christmas Eve.
She blessed me more than she'll EVER know. I couldn't hold in my joy--it came out in laughter and tears, on and off for an hour as I opened it.
She's my only daughter, Sarah Grace, to whom none can compare.
She sat beside me on the sofa for the big reveal.




A Friendship Scrapbook !!!

Here it is. I'll post a few pages at a time.


Staring at Page 1....





From Sacha (who did her own page)














and Barb (best friend since 3rd grade when I lived in Kansas)













Isabelle, my French friend and sister in Christ whom I "met" online after Katrina hit)
and my sister-in-law, Pat, also wrote touching letters to me....














My friends Therese and Bonnie shared fond memories. It's the little things people remembered that made me say, "That meant something to her? Wow."

Therese said it best when she described what she hoped I'd feel as I read this scrapbook. "May you curl up in the lap of the God of the Universe, lay your head on His chest, and hear His heart beat just for you."







Bonnie's handwritten, three-page letter is tucked into the lavendar envelope. A sample of it follows...














My friend Sandy Steward (from Ben's lacrosse games) and Danielle (dressed as a cute Norman Rockwell girl at my 40th birthday party)













You can click to enlarge any of the photos. I'll post more soon.

Such love. I can hardly believe this many people love me "Just As I Am." They do a whole lot of overlooking and forgiving, that's for sure. True friends.