fotos and football

Yesterday's decluttering task was a lot more daunting them I thought it would be. Organizing the family photos. While everyone else is putting their photos into fancy schmancy scrapbooks, I've been taking them out of photo albums and putting them, loosely stacked, into boxes. I've discovered albums don't work for our family. If we're looking at them, it's usually several of us together and we want to pass them around. Or I'm rummaging through them for a certain picture or theme, pull them out, never to return them to their proper place. Plus, the albums are all dusty, falling apart, a few even, ewwwww, smell like a cat might have peed on them.

I'd already taken the most damaged albums apart about a year ago, put them into plastic boxes. I was going to go out yesterday and buy some more of them when I remembered that I had bought a bunch of tin gift boxes and stored them in the garage. They were a holiday item, marked down to something ridiculous like ten cents each, so I'd bought several dozen of them and then forgot I had them. I dragged them out and they were just perfect to stack two piles of 3X5 photos side by side.

SIX HOURS LATER.... fingertips shredded and cut..... legs cramped..... shoulders aching..... I finished taking the last of the photos out of albums. All that's left are miscellaneous oversized photos and all those school pics and sports photos. They'll need a larger storage box. Oh, and a couple old albums of Jeff and the kids from his first marriage - I wanted to ask him if he was okay with it before I took those apart. This morning he said that was fine.

They're not terribly organized yet. I'll save that task for some time in the years to come. I was more concerned with condensing the amount of space they took up than I was worried about putting them in order. I seriously doubt that's possible anyway. It was hard to put them in chronological order. I depended a lot on "where we lived at the time" - so the photos are mainly divided into categories of: before kids (that's only one box), Sonoma, Roseville, San Diego, and then Susanville (the last being ten years all jumbled together in no order whatsoever). But I'm happy. The tins take up less then half the space on the shelves that the albums did, and they're easier to browse (the plastic boxes are see-thru and the tins have a spot see-thru spot on the lid to insert a photo into it). And they're protected from dust and grime.

It's truly astounding how many photos we have and yet how few moments in time I seemed to have captured. I guess another way of looking at it - it goes to show how full and blessed my life has been. And I'm sure I only remember a fraction of the past events, laughs, pratfalls, and tender moments. Heck, I have trouble sometimes remembering what happened yesterday.

It's interesting how photos I've glanced over a million times without a second thought when they were in an album, take on a whole new life of their own when viewed individually. It was a lot of work, but it was fascinating taking such a detailed walk down memory lane. It wasn't a real emotional walk, it was more like a run actually as I was trying to work fast, but it was fun.

I had pulled out a bunch of randon photos I wanted to share with you'all, but after scanning a few of them this morning I decided it was too much work. So I settled on a couple of photos of William, age three, playing football. It seemed apropros with "hell week" looming after this weekend. Although they've been having weight training and once-a-week football practices all summer, next Monday is the official start of high school football practice. Yes, my baby is finally going to public school.

I don't have any photos of William yet for this year, but for two years now he's played in the youth football league. Here's a photo of him after one of last year's games. He's the tallest sweaty head sticking out of the huddle. Last year he was the tallest kid on the team, including the coaches. This year I think there's one coach taller then him, and the quarterback is almost the same height.


He's been quite an asset to his team. He usually sacks the quarterback at least once in every game. He even played once with a broken finger, taped it up and finished the game. Of course we didn't know at the time it was broken. Yet, it would have been hard to predict his love of the game from the less-then-enthusiastic beginnings shown in the photos below.

The family was camping and his four older siblings were playing with a football. He wanted to be included in a bad way, but was really too young for the rough and tumble. Still, he gave it a shot.

This first picture is of him "blocking" his older brother.

This one is my favorite. Here he is "catching" the ball.

Maybe later in the season I should take these incriminating shots to a game and share them with his teammate and coaches. Hehe.