a long awaited project

Over a year ago I received a home laminator for my birthday after having wanted one for some time. Sadly, it sat in the box this whole time as I mentally noted it as "a project for when I have a chunk of time." Ha, I should know by now that there is never such a chunk. So when I received a second laminator from my mother-in-law for Christmas this year, I figured I'd better get cracking. I opened it last weekend and found out that it was as simple as plugging it in, turning it on, and sticking paper by paper through the feed to be laminated. Oh, if I only I had started this a year ago.

So now I have a pile of laminated pages that are now awaiting phase #2 of said project: the three-hole punch to be put in the appropriate boy's binders. This is my very, very minimalist version of scrapbooking: laminated those art projects that stick out as truly memorable and sticking them in binders for each child. Once the baby books ended, I started to feel a little sad that I didn't have anything to keep memorable papers around. Those who know me understand that I have not a crafty bone in my body, so this is about as good as it gets for me :)

Jack is finally at that stage where he chooses to sound words out himself instead of asking me to spell everything before he writes it. I thought this valentine was a smashing success and so sweet, so it got laminated :)

I'm also using this opportunity to laminate the construction paper leaves we used to write out and recycle after making our pre-Thanksgiving "tree of Gratitude." Now we can use dry erase markers and re-use the leaves. Oh, happy day, for less cutting in front of the t.v. in the weeks before Thanksgiving.

We celebrated a very belated Christmas with my parents on Groundhog's Day, and the boys are loving the Drake Bulldogs shirts they got.