Weekending, and interior decorating

A whole weekend went by, and the best thing I have to show is a few pictures of... well, pictures.

Last week, I started to "update" my family picture wall in the family room. The wall only had a few pictures, which I hung in the first weeks of our owning this house. The picture project started a massive search through my digital picture archive... hours of work and agonizing decisions resulted in the ordering of 50+ prints that qualified for printable status. (some were duplicates... I couldn't decide if I wanted to frame them in 5x7 or 8x10)

And then.... THEN, the real work started. How to balance the distribution of pictures among two boys... who are over 4.5 years apart in age. And, how to make up for the fact that I neglected Alex's first five years---not because I was shy with the camera (oh, most definitely not) but because they weren't digital.

(then that started a search of my "printed" photo archives for the best of his first few years)

And then there's the balance of large vs small prints for each boy... and making sure each year in his life is accounted for. There are more trade-offs in this picture exercise than I anticipated.

Ohh.... and then I went to Ikea to purchase more pictures frames. Ikea is an experience... an exercise in restraint... and when you go with your mother-in-law it is a long, delightful afternoon, a meal, a few cups of coffee, and more than a few discussions on the viability of a purple table in the living room.

So I did see those boys for a while this weekend. There were a few hours this morning when we played loud music and hung out together in a sunny kitchen. I made pound cake, as requested by Alex, and they made various science experiments. There was a soccer game, where Alex's team finally walked away as the victor. There were moments of cuddling, combined with conversations between stuffed animals. And with insanely warm weather for a Michigan February, there were many hours outside, and many pounds of mud tracked into the house.

All in all, a good weekend.