Onto the next chapter ...

Well, the time has come ... Chad has officially walked the halls of Palmer HS for the last time today. No more scrambling the night before on the assignments due 'tomorrow' (he works best under pressure and late at night you see - at least that's his reasoning) ... no more tests to study for (well, the little amount of studying he did have to do). This is all true at least for now ...

Next year he is off to Colorado School of Mines. Will he repeat these same habits? Hopefully not ...

But what does all of this mean for me??

No more ...
- phone calls reporting him tardy or absent from one or more classes
- phone calls to let me know he has a D or F in one or more classes (and, yes, this has happened on occasion)
- going to Target or Home Depot for supplies for the project due 'tomorrow'
- phone calls or emails from D11 transportation to discuss his behaviour on that big yellow school bus (granted, these haven't happened for a couple of years since he's been driving, but his folder contains a few of these treasured items)

He set his goals and achieved them. For now I'm sure he's glad it's all over. Years down the road will he miss these days? Probably so if he's like so many of the rest of us. But for now ... Congratulations Chad! It's over and you did it great! I'm so proud of you. I love you. - Mom

then and now ...

Oh ... you'll all love this ... It's 6:15 and I just got a phone call from Palmer HS that Chad was reported missing or absent from one or more classes today! That'll be the last one!

Terry's workshop

OK ... well, you get another post today ... who knows, maybe even another later. Terry has told me numerous times "Don't you have some scanning or something to do?". I don't think he enjoys my 'help'!
Things are coming along!
Since my last post about the house we have gotten a few more things done actually. The living room is COMPLETE! The painting is done, the baseboards are new and painted and put in. The dining room is almost finished. We have the chair rail to finish and the window frame to put up (it is just waiting for drying time after I stained and polyurethaned it).
The oak stair railings are stained and waiting for the dry time so I can poly them. The oak ledges are now ready for me to stain and poly.
The weather is gorgeous today (around 60 or so). We sure could use some rain though. It is very very dry and we are under high fire danger.

WOOHOO!!!

I am DONE scanning my 35mm negatives! (Notice I said 35mm - as I have disc and 110 that I need to try to figure out if my scanner can do - but at least I am done so I can work on Chad's photos for graduation) I ended up with almost 3300 jpegs. I elected to just scan everything rather than go thru and only scan the ones that I wanted - I became rather methodical this way and probably much faster in the long run. Here are a few pictures from the earlier years. I don't think the boys know about my blog, or if they do I doubt they ever look at it. I'm sure they'd kill me for some of these pictures.

Pictures

Scanning all these negatives just makes me laugh at what I thought was 'photographic'! Based upon the number of pictures I took of the following, I must've thought I'd never ever again see these ...
- deer
- elk
- ducks and geese - you can't believe the number of pictures I took of these animals!
- groves of golden aspen
And to think of the cost of the film and the developing! LOL
Not like I don't take pictures of these animals now - but it's simply the click of a delete button.
And speaking of pictures of animals ... I have almost as many pictures of the cats as I do the boys! (OK, maybe not quite)

Same 'ole, same 'ole

Well ... it's a week later and not much has changed. I am still scanning and we're still working on the living room. No surprises there! LOL
We are about done with the living room though! I just spackled some nail holes in the baseboards and will paint them shortly after they dry for a bit. Then I think we'll mostly be done! YEH!!! I'll post a current picture later tonight. Terry redid the electronics so things come on when they should and go off when they should with the push of just one button. I'm so glad he understands that stuff ... cuz I sure don't! So now it is turning the corner to the dining room to finish the wainscoting (which we started several years ago) and then give it a coat of paint.
On the scanning front ... welllll ... I thought I only had about 85 rolls of negatives. I was nearing completion the other night and was thinking 'hmmm, I don't recall seeing our vacation from 1998 in the stack'. Lo and behold ... I found another 75 or so rolls! So ... I'll be at this scanning business for just a tad bit longer than originally anticipated. I will have to post some of these pictures ... they are just too funny. I can hardly believe that my babies used to be that little!
Well ... I've got painting to do ... so I'd better get to it!

OK ... picture uploaded as promised. Looks nice, eh??

How many trips to Home Depot do you think it will take?

Why do I allow him to go to Home Depot alone? We took the baseboards off in the living room and are putting 4" ones on like we did down in the family room. You'd think he could get the right ones ... but NOOOOO ... what he came home with doesn't match. So ... trip #2 back to HD to exchange and get the correct baseboards (good thing gas isn't still $4 a gallon!). I have the painting done except for the wall behind the entertainment center and some of the trim along the ceiling. It's 5:15 now ... I'm hoping to get the baseboards painted tonight so we can get them put on tomorrow and the living room put back together ... or there will be yet another unfinished project ... not like that would be a surprise ... but I'm just hoping. Terry does a very good job at these DIY projects ... but he's very picky and as a result it takes him a while (i.e. part of why there are still not baseboards and doorframes in various parts of the hours from the flood we had 4+ years ago). Well, I better go help him with the lasagna. LOL ... NEVER A DULL MOMENT!!! Laughter is the best medicine ya know!
Let me know what y'all think of the color - I think you can tell from the pic pretty well ...

Scanning, scanning, and more scanning

I've been preparing for Chad's graduation. I finally got his senior pictures ordered and I'm now working on the previous 18 years. We've been digital since 2000, so I only have the first 9 years of his life to digitize - which amounts to about 100 rolls of 35mm film (at least I have all my negatives organized - "Thank you Creative Memories!"). Each 24 exposure takes me about an hour to scan and get saved to my harddisk. So, that is looooots of hours of scanning - and I'm only about a third done at this point. Then I still have to organize and get them scrapped! Thank goodness for digital scrapbooking. It will make this process a lot faster. Again "Thank you Creative Memories!"!! I use their Memory Manager to organize and Storybook Creator Plus to scrap them. The photo on this post was made with SBC+ ... don't ya love it? I may tweak it yet before the final version to print, but I think my first stab at it is pretty awesome.
I also made out our 'have to do before graduation day' list. HA! We should've started on it years ago! Oh yeah ... we did! We just don't have anything FINISHED on the list! Follow-thru to completion is not a strong suit in this house.
I'm going to try to get the living room painted today. It's still too cold out to do much outside - namely work on finishing painting the house. Maybe Terry will work on the family room floor and/or stairs. That we started last labor day. We were on a roll and got the floor itsself done, but then we needed to wait for the trim to come in, which was about a month later, and we lost our momentum on that. Ahhh ... the joys of home ownership ... always something to do.
Well ... I'm going to finish up a roll of scanning and then paint the living room. I'll take some before and after pics. Let me know what ya think!