wed, 1/6...day 6

The goat kids we discovered in our neighborhood over the holidays are so cute. Makes me want one! That's what I need, right? Goats to take care of!

Actually, it's tempting sometimes. Maybe not right before we head off on multiple travel adventures this coming year, though.

tue, 1/5...day 5

Cory is peeking out to see what I'm up to in the backyard. If I'm "gone" too long, he's compelled to come look for me. I might have been whisked off by aliens - you never know! :D

mon, 1/4...day 4

The Daily Dish (Andrew Sullivan's news/political blog) has a feature called "The View From Your Window" where readers send in a photo that is, as it says, the view from their windows, wherever they happen to be all over the world. It's fascinating. They even published a book of these photos before the holidays.

This isn't the most compelling "view from your window" (even in my own life). But it's the view from my office so I see it every workday.

sun, 1/3...day 3

Every year I make photo calendars from photos of the kids taken the previous year. It's a big project going back over all the 1000's of photos (especially this past year, with Project 365!), finding a good assortment of horizontal photos or cropping pictures to make a horizontal out of a vertical, including some of each kid, paying some attention to birthday months, holidays, etc.

Uploading the photos and creating the calendar (I use Shutterfly) is the easy part! :-) Though this year they have colored borders to choose - that added a bit of challenge (they've always been just white before).

I always make one for my dad and Marian, one for Candi, one for me, and then sometimes other people whom I think might enjoy them (without getting tired of Another Kid of Stacia's month after month :D).

I love having mine up in my office. This is the first photo of the year.

sat, 1/2...day 2

Today is my sister Sieglinde's 50th birthday! Wow. Even typing that just blows me away. One of the great things about having a sister just 20 months older than you is that you have a little over a year to slowly get used to the idea of the next birthday. I need that time to get ready for 50, believe me! :-)

This photo was taken by my grandmother one year when we were visiting for Christmas (as we usually did when I was young). You can see me trying to sneak into the side of the picture (groan), and then my cousin Tanaya and my beautiful sister!

fri, 1/1...day 1

It's a new year! And a fresh start to Project 365. One whole year complete. Feels like a pretty major accomplishment! Now I'm busy incorporating the photos into digital scrapbook pages so I can print them and have a hardcopy version. Can't wait!

Every year we post photos and photo cards from friends and family in a card holder on the wall, along with regular Christmas cards. I love seeing all these happy, familiar faces every day! I often don't take down the display for months into the new year. Being reminded of loved ones and how they've grown and changed over the past year is too precious to skip over quickly just because the Christmas season is over.

[day 365... dec 31]

Niall went to the Seattle Art Museum on a field trip with his class to see the Alexander Calder exhibit (they were learning about making art with wire so it was a nice tie-it to his work) and was really inspired about art afterwards. He asked if we could go back to SAM before January 31 so he could see the Michelangelo exhibit, since there wasn't time for his class to tour that as well. So today we dropped off Cory for a playdate with Grandma Shannon and drove downtown to SAM.

I hadn't been to SAM in many years (nearly 15, I think) so it was great to have an excuse to visit, and to have a special outing with just Niall. Of course, he tired pretty quickly of all the fine detail in the Michelangelo exhibit but we enjoyed looking around at other art as well. One of our favorites was the huge cape made from replicated soldier dog-tags - really striking. The cars with the firecracker lights coming out of them were very cool too.