I Would Like To Announce That I Have Packed A Box

This afternoon I cleaned out the secretary in our living room so that I could start packing what needs to go to the new house, and I'm happy to tell you that it only took me two hours!

For one box!

This does not bode well.

But oh, the pictures that were in there...pictures of our first Christmas tree after we got married, pictures of the first house that we bought, and then pictures of this house when we were building it.

I got a little nostalgic.

There were also about 492 pictures of our dogs, including photos of the time that we dressed them up in fleeces for a Christmas portrait, and I got all sentimental about when Maggie the lab was a puppy and I put a red bow around her neck. These days if I tried to put a bow around her neck she would spin around in circles trying to dislodge it, then get into a bit of a tug of war with the ribbon, but a puppy with a bow around her neck is a pretty sweet memory.

And then I found the ID tags that Alex and I had in the hospital when he was born.

And then I found my diploma for my B.A., my teaching evaluation letters from grad school, an old 3.5 inch floppy disk that has every paper I ever wrote in college.

I was trying to be methodical and detached about the cleaning out process, but I finally gave up, sat on the couch, and looked at every paper, every card, and every photo. l laughed a bunch (it's a wonder David ever married me given the state of my mid-90's bangs), and sighed a bunch (in the first little house that we rented, I believe my Decorating Objective was to display every single wedding gift that we received), and talked to myself a bunch (WHY IN THE WORLD have I saved my checkbook register from 1996?). I even cried a little (see earlier statement regarding hospital ID bracelets).

But mostly, more than anything, I felt really, deeply blessed.

And now I'm off to pack box number two....