The Memory Book -- Almost a Memory Itself...

Taking a short breather in between the 3rd grade memory book project and the 3rd grade slide show presentation project! We're a little behind schedule (due to circumstances beyond our control), but we keep plugging along and I'm sure that it will all be good in the end! I am done with my part of the memory book, now it is being copied and hopefully bound and hopefully ready in time to be handed out to the students next week!

In the meantime, I am satisfied in the knowledge that 1) the end of these projects is in sight!, 2) they will hopefully be lovely when they are finished, and most importantly, 3) I am spending this crazy time working on something special for my daughter. And, she has been a big help to me -- helping to identify some of the kids that I do not recognize, helping to distinguish during which years some of the pictures were taken. She even provided me with a great quote that I used for the back cover (which, accidentally got printed on the back of the front cover and then laminated, so now it is technically the inside cover... Again, out of our control!). It was a quote from Walt Disney (one of her absolute favorite people!) and it was so great that I also shared it with my boss who likes to put quotes on his meeting agendas -- he used it for his directors' meeting this week.

"We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." - Walt Disney

In addition to her helping me with the project, I have tried to discreetly put in a few things that will be special for my girl. (But of course, would also be appropriate for the other kids!) The front cover text is in "Disney Print" a font in the style of Walt Disney's handwriting. We were scrambling for pictures for the 4 collages that we did -- Kindergarten, First, Second, and Third Grades -- and so I was able to sneak a couple of extras of my girlie in the Kindergarten and Second Grade collages (those were the years I was assigned). And, some of her friends may be featured a little more than some of the other kids -- although, truly, some of the other kids are just NOT in enough pictures and their parents did not send many in. Some kids clearly seem to gravitate to the camera, I have learned through this experience! We did scrounge to make sure that every single child has at least one picture in each of the collages -- for kindergarten, I had to cut and paste 2 girls from my daughter's bowling birthday party (you can hardly see the bowling lanes behind one of the girls...). And for the second grade collage I did an amazing job (if I do say so myself!) on cropping one of those same girls out of a picture taken of a different class in the cafeteria, and making it look like it's just a nice picture of her. My girl and I sat and looked through -- no joke -- close to 100 pictures to find one of this little girl to no avail. I finally found this one on my own and was so excited that I had to call my girl down to show her what I did -- she was impressed! Again, this girl obviously does not seek out the camera!

In addition to letters from the teachers, pictures, and "biographies" from the students, we have a word search with all of the kids' names, a page with their favorite things -- songs, movies, tv shows, food, school subjects -- which we created from a survey that we handed out at school, and a page that lists their first names and their career aspirations (my girl chose, as I had anticipated, "author"). We also have 4 pages for "autographs" from friends and teachers. On each of the autograph pages, I put a quote about friendship. In another little nod to my sweet girl, on one of the autograph pages I put a sweet quote from "Piglet & Pooh", Piglet being her very favorite character!

""Are we going to be friends forever?" asked Piglet. "Even longer," answered Pooh." - A.A. Milne

I know that this is only a third grade memory book (although it's felt like a high school yearbook at times this past week...), but my daughter was lucky enough to go to this wonderful little school for the past four years and we have a lot of wonderful memories of her time here -- if we can capture even a portion of that for ourselves and for the other students and their families, I think it has been time well spent!

"Cherish the moments for they too, become memories." - L. Kaliski