School binder

I am a BIG collector of memories. I think, in part, its because I have such a bad memory. Storing things away helps me remember them when I look at them. For my children, who I know will forget much of their early years, I feel like I have to store their memories for them.

For a couple of years now I have stored "special" school papers in a big closed folder type thingy. One for each child per year kind of thing. I think that system works ok, but the folder can get ripped if it's handled too much and the contents can get all out of sorts, so I am trying something new this year.

Behold, The Memory Binder:

Da, da, da, dun:

Inside I store all sorts of things (obviously). Today I'll be demonstrating Tabitha's Kindergarten binder.

When you open it up I have her class picture in a page protector. Easy to see and not so easy to bend or smudge. Well, I suppose with kids it will still be easy to destroy, but hopefully it won't be too bad.

Enoch saw this picture hanging in the school office and asked if he could have it when they were done. They said yes! I glued the glasses she's wearing in the picture on top. (Tabitha is the one with her head turned in the yellow shirt and overall dress)

I like to keep at least one copy of papers that she does regularly.

This is a certificate she earned during the year.

Larger art work gets folded in thirds and hole punched in.

Some pieces were too small to be punched or I just wanted to keep them whole. For those, I glued them onto construction paper and added them to the book.

Right now they are sitting on my book shelf, but they'll eventually make their way to a more secure storage location. Assuming I do this until about 5th grade for the four kids I should have about 24 binders. YIKES!

Do you have any good memory storage ideas I should know about???

For other tips, check out Works for me Wednesday at We are THAT family.

Take a few minutes to check out my other back to school posts if you haven't done so already. ~Michelle

Kitchen Tip Tuesday

Does it bother you to throw things away instead of using them? I came across this tip a few years ago and I love it. You know the plastic tabs that close your bag of bread, potatoes or onions? We save them in our house. I use them to scrape off dishes that has food stuck to it.

For instance, this here pot, my mom tried using the scrub brush for, but she couldn't get it clean. My handy dandy tab did the job in just a few short minutes.


I used to use my fingernails a lot, but that can hurt! Let me know if you have any other methods of getting stuck on food off of your dishes.

To see other tips, visit Tammy's Recipes. She is a faithful sister in the Lord.

First Day of School- Tabitha

Tabitha has been waiting for this day all summer. Sure, she enjoyed our sporadic outings, but she missed being in school all day every day. She's a social girl, what can I say?

Today, she was totally ready to enter 2nd grade. She was dressed within 5 minutes of waking up and begging to leave right away. I had to convince her to eat something, anything to fill her little belly. When she was fed, she begged to leave again, but it was still too early.

The power of packed lunch. She got upset, because something in her lunch leaked. Every year something ruins her lunch bag early on. Hopefully this year she can hang onto this for the whole year.

This is the best pic I could get of all four kids together. They rarely ever cooperate for group shots. Seth makes sure that he looks upset in all group pictures, but he really is happy. Just another of his attention getting techniques, I suppose. (He gets to start school in two days, so you'll see another set of pics then, Lord willing.)

This is the view from our front door. As you can see, we don't have far to go.

Tabitha wasted NO TIME. She rushed ahead of me, I barely had time to take the camera out of the bag to capture this shot. :)

When she finally got in her class room, she was suddenly quiet and nervous. By the end she had a great day and made some new friends as well as connected with the old ones.

Menu Plan Monday

In October, Enoch and I will have our 8th wedding anniversary. Time sure does fly! Well, for about the last month I've been making weekly menus. I'm not sure what's taken me so long to finally do it, but it has helped me tremendously.

Not only do I now make menus, but now I get to share them with you. Isn't that exciting???!!! :)

Breakfasts: muffins, smoothies and toast, pancakes, cereal, dosai with sambar, and yogurt parfaits.

Lunches: PB & J, egg salad, leftovers, lunch meat sandwiches, pot pies, quesadillas, grill cheese sandwiches and leftovers.

Dinners: Chicken drumsticks with carrots and potatoes.

Mexican shepard's pie

Sausage in spaghetti sauce with rotini and coleslaw

Hotdogs with chili sauce, chips and veggies

picadillo

kabobs

leftovers night.

With menu planning I end up having more than enough food for the week. Whatever meals we don't end up cooking, make the follow week that much more easy.

For more menu ideas hop over to I'm an Organizing Junkie.

Splashing fun?

Is this a face only a mother could love? Yes, it is... if you knew where he had just been. I will start off by saying that he is our first child who has repeatedly gone to this place for fun. I don't know how long he was there, but he was found at the toilet getting soaked. I'm sure you're just as disgusted as I get each time I find him in that area of the house.

I don't have any action shots, thankfully. This picture was taken after I scrubbed him down and put clean clothes on him.

What kind of yucky situations have you found your kids in?

Afternoon Amusement

Yesterday we bought this puzzle at Target in their dollar spot section. It's a 100 piece good quality puzzle.

Tabitha enjoyed spending her time making it. I like it. On the box they tell you what planets are what. Anything to quietly occupy children and teach them something at the same time sounds like a good deal to me.

Here's the coolest thing about the puzzle, though. You can imagine how much the kids liked the glow in the dark part:

Have you found any great $1 finds lately?

Side trip to Oregon

During our visit to Seattle we took a couple days to drive down the Oregon coast. Welcome to Oregon!!!

From this picture one would think that our kids really enjoyed the ride. Everything we saw was breathtaking, but the kids mostly complained about being in the car.

I guess in this case the kids were glad to be "out of" the car. :) Here they are with their abba.

This is from a 415 year old tree. Posing with the grands.

A cool piece of driftwood.

It wouldn't be complete without a climb, now would it?

The beaches are beautiful, although a little too chilly to go into.

"Be careful Patricia!" :)

My seagull friend.

Look! A picture with just Enoch and I together. Haven't seen one of those in a while.

This is what we went on the drive for- to see all these beauties. Too bad the kids couldn't understand that this is what its all about.

I loved the rocky cliff thingies.

I really think we should have gone on a nice hike. That really would have completed the trip, but it just wasn't in the agenda. Next time, right?

Abba and Jeji themselves.

I think these are cows, but I kind of forget.

The man, abba, himself, just a few short weeks after his heart procedure. Already braving an adventure with 4 rambunctious kids.

Just lovely.

Beach in the morning.

We looked for sand dollars, but we couldn't find any.

Ian and Jeji.

We stopped by a family friend's house on our way back to Seattle. Lovely visit for lunch.

Goodbye Oregon. See you next time!