Blog Books and Activities

I've worked on our family 2020 blog books all morning today. I usually have tried to order them in January, which gives me time to give it to Corey as an annual anniversary present, but I didn't do them  this year because I had too many pictures... so I'd have to divide them into 3 volumes... I was 369 photos over from just doing 2 volumes. Plus back in Jan I didn't find a discount code anywhere... I looked up if other sites were less expensive... BlookUp and Pixxibook were both more expensive AND would have been more volumes, so I'm sorry Blog2Print that I was murmuring against you, I guess you are the best deal. But still, I didn't want to dish out over $300 bucks (I budget atleast $120 a book) so I just decided to wait on it. Today I saw a 35% off coupon online that expired on Apr 25th, so I decided now as a good time to get it done. 

The trick with blog2print is that they only allow 1150 photos per book. For 2020, they told me that I have 2669 photos, so I could have just make the year into three equal volumes of 4 months each, but instead I'm thinking I'll just try to get as close to 1150 photos as I can for vol 1, then pick it up from there for volume 2, and if I have a little bit of 2020 left over, I'll save it for a transition 2020-2021 book to overlap between those two years. So for 2020, Vol 1 is going to be Jan 1 - June 20, which is just under 1150 photos, and then volume 2 is Father's Day up until Nov 10th just before Hawaii, and so then I'll make another volume next year that will be a Nov 2020 - Spring 2021 transition book. I took so many picture during Hawaii that I could have enough to get that overlapping volume right now. But I'm still finishing up a few posts in March, so maybe not. I'll keep an eye out for discounts and maybe from now on I'll just order the blog books when I've got enough for a full volume/1150 photos. I'll save a little bit of money by making the books as big as possible and not working them into the Jan-Dec calendar year. SO there was all my thinking, for the me in the future who wants to know when/why I stopped doing the blog books by the year - that started today.

I had them finished and ready to order around 1:30. It doesn't take a long time working on layout or anything, but it just took a long time because I had to go in and keep changing the date of when each book began and ended as I tried to make both fit within the 1150 photo limit. And more than a few times when I changed the date, the whole thing reset so I had to upload the cover photos again and choose the book cover and type up the "dedication" again. I usually just use a quote for my dedications. For my Vol 1 quote, I used 1 Nephi 14:14, since last year President Nelson said we had front row seats to see the fulfillment of that prophecy. That prophesy was fulfilled in 2020, AND it's been one of my favorite scriptures for year (my lucky #14) so it seemed appropriate. And for Vol 2, it was this quote by Brigham Young "Now is the time for labor. Let the fire of the covenant which you made in the House of the Lord, burn in your hearts like flame unquenchable." I've got another thing for the word "fire" in the scriptures. Especially from how it's used in 1 Ne 22 - there is it used as a description of how the righteous will be protected in the last days, but it's also used to describe destruction, and it's also used to describe God's glory, also our baptism by the Holy Ghost, so I just find it a really interesting word. It's like a riddle trying to understand the meaning of it in different scriptures. 

Anyway, what else. After school today, I went to help with Activity Days, which is a little primary group for the girls. Today we learned how to do braids. Natalie working on a braid of her friend Lani May.

Sophi getting worked on by Esti, and other cute girls in the group.

It was fun. It was at Esti's house, and they have a little dog named Chewie who is super sweet and I volunteered to watch him next weekend when they go up to Idaho for their son's wedding, so we'll see if they take us up on that. 

Abi and Lily had a young women's activity tonight. Lily had soccer practice, but I spaced that cause I was gone at activity days, but then it was good that she wasn't there or else she would have missed young women. Of course, I spaced out on that too, and A and L were supposed to be at the church at 6:30. I did not have this on my radar at all. At like 6:40, the leaders texted us to see if they were coming. Corey had just called to let me know about it, and that he was hurrying home with Abi (she had gone to his parents house after school) and I texted that Abi was coming but Lily would miss. I went in and asked Lily if she wanted to go, cause maybe I could drive her downtown. They were doing a cute activity going to see the cherry blossoms at the State Capitol. She kinda slunk down in her chair and with a sad expression said "Nah, I don't really feel like I belong anyway..." and then I could see from the window a car pull up... and it was her leaders! "They're here for you!! Hurry get ready!" and with a smile she got up and ran to get her shoes. And I just thought that those leaders are wonderful. Waiting around for her and then coming to get her even when I said not to worry about it because we forgot. Lily, you do belong!

Abi and Lily both had a great time and have some photos for the memory:

Some profile pictures: 

Pretty cherry blossoms -

Thank you to these leaders! They just won an even bigger place in my heart.

I had a quick visit with Michelle when she came to the door for Lily. I apologized for not checking the Group Me messages! She said no worries and that she doesn't know how I do it with so many kids. I said we usually fall short, like how Lily missed soccer practice today. ...except for with Violin! I've got that down and am committed to that! Her daughters play violin too, her oldest is in book 4, (wow!) and her youngest is Daniel's age and is just starting and she said she was thinking she might learn to play along with her. I told her that I started learning with Natalie and that it is a lot of fun, I really enjoy it. So she said she was inspired by that and maybe I'll follow up and see if she's doing it, cause she should. She said "I'm just afraid that I'll sound bad!" and I replied "I do!!! But it's still fun... and I know I'll get better eventually..." but it is super annoying to want to play beautifully yet to hear myself playing scratching sounds. I trust that the beauty will come as I endure and try to improve upon my current poor quality!