My husband was out of town last week, and in an attempt to save my sanity, I let my kids make a list of everything they wanted to do during that time while he was gone. Each girl got to name a restaurant where they wanted to eat, a place they wanted to visit, and an activity they wanted to do. They unanimously said they wanted to go get their school supplies as one of their choices. So, despite the fact that taking all of my children to Target alone is one of my least favorite activities, I loaded them up and off we went.

 

Equipped with their lists on my phone, we weaved through the aisles and pulled the corresponding pencils, notebooks, markers, crayons, colored pencils, scissors, sanitizer wipes, and baggies. We bought the folders with pockets and prongs, the glue sticks, and the note cards. The art boxes, the tissues, and the extra large pink erasers.

 

Our cart was comically full, between the baby in the front seat, the 3 year old in the basket with school supplies piled all around her, and my older two girls hanging on either side of the cart. We received warm smiles and heartfelt chuckles from other customers in the store. The joy and excitement of my children with all of their new belongings had its own gravity. I mean, who doesn’t love a crisp, pointy crayon?

 

I found myself in the euphoria of checking one more thing off the list, having already purchased their backpacks, lunch boxes, uniforms, and shoes, and I thought to myself, “Alright. They are ready to go back to school now. They have everything they need.”

 

But later that night, once the kids were all in bed and I was alone in a quiet house, I was confronted with feelings of anxiety, restlessness, and uncertainty as we prepare to start another year of school. The “what-ifs” and the “I-hopes” took over. I came to the realization that my children actually needed so much more than what was on that School Supplies List. So I began to brainstorm a new list.

 

What do my children really need for this school year?

 

Variety pack of Respect, Resourcefulness, & Resilience

You will need all three of these throughout the year — heck, throughout the day. Respect for your teachers and your peers. Respect also for yourself. There’s a respectful way to disagree with someone else. There’s a respectful way to stand up for yourself. There’s a respectful way to win and a respectful way to lose. Some human beings will hardly seem worthy at times, but we are called to love and respect one another…to treat others as we would like to be treated. Respect.

 

You will need to be resourceful. You will need to know the answers to questions, and you will need learn where to find those answers. If you can’t find what you’re looking for at first pass, try again. Keep looking. Keep asking. Don’t give up. Things won’t go as planned. Projects will fall apart. You’ll lose things. You’ll break things. Be resourceful and keep going.

 

Resilience. The simple art of getting knocked down, but standing right back up. Whether it’s just a mental struggle or you literally trip and fall on the playground, be resilient. Get up. Someone may hurt your feelings, and as much as I want to keep that from happening, I know that I can’t. We can’t control what anyone says or does to us, but we 100% can control how we handle it. And in this family, we get back up.

 

1 ream of Patience

Have patience with yourself. You may not get things right away. Your name may not be called first for a special classroom privilege, and you may have to wait a while before you are recognized for a job well done. Patience. Your time is coming. You may not be that great yet at what you’re trying to do, but you’ll get there.

 

And have patience with others– with your teachers, with your friends, and with your mama. Especially your mama. I will forget to sign more than a few papers. I won’t always remember that next Thursday you’re supposed to wear green (which means that next Wednesday, I need to wash all the green– but first I have to find it). It will take a little while for me to get back into the swing of things, too. Patience. And reminders.

 

1 box of Thinking Outside the Box

I dare you to think differently. Come up with new ideas and listen to other points of view. Don’t be afraid to take an unconventional approach. Be a little weird. It’s OK.

 

1 set of Slow to Anger, Quick to Love

You will be challenged multiple times a week, perhaps even multiple times a day, by people who you don’t agree with, who may hurt your feelings, who may play with someone else, who may break something of yours that you really loved — and you will want to feel angry, hurt, disappointed, or left out. Those are all very real feelings, but I encourage you, when you start to feel overwhelmed and consumed by anger and frustration, when you feel like the water is about to boil over…take a deep breath and turn down the heat. Go for a walk. Take a time out. Breathe deeply. And reflect. Try to think like the other person. Is there a reason for his or her actions? Is there something you could have misunderstood? Is the other person just having a crummy day and felt like spilling that misery onto you? Do your best to meet the people who hurt you where they are. And if you’re brave enough, I dare you to show them love.

 

24 pack of Inclusion

Playground games. Seats in the cafeteria. Birthday parties. It’s OK if you and a group of friends are playing together. You don’t have to go around and insist everyone to join you in the name of inclusion. However, if you see someone who is alone, who has no one to talk to, nowhere to sit, no one to play with, you must make an effort to include him or her. Start a conversation, do a big ol’ “come over here” gesture, pat the open seat beside you and offer a warm smile — it doesn’t matter how you do it, just make sure you are an includer. The person may resist at first. The person may want alone time and that is their choice, but you keep inviting anyway. Every day. Every time. The potential rejection you may experience from someone not accepting your inclusion PALES SIGNIFICANTLY to the potential devastation the other person may be feeling if you never make the effort. Take the risk. Fight the feeling in your belly that makes it feel awkward and the voice in your head that says, “I’m sure she is fine over there by herself,” or “She wasn’t that nice to me today so I’m not going to talk to her.” Include, always, anyway.

 

1 container of Confidence (large size)

You were gifted by God to be the exact person you are right now. You aren’t finished. You aren’t done. You are a work in progress. You are evolving everyday. You are growing, learning, and changing in both mental and physical ways. You are not perfect, but no one is. Be confident. It’s easier said than done. I know this to be true. I battle with my mind everyday, but I am working on it and determined to be better for you. Believing that you are anything other than an extraordinary miracle from God is just a lie that you don’t have the time to listen to. You have things to do. You have stuff to learn. You have stories to tell. You have a life to live, and no one can do that like you. There will be other girls with pretty hair, but here’s the good news – more than one girl can have pretty hair. No one has to have the prettiest hair. There will be other girls with cute clothes, but here’s the best part – more than one girl can have cute clothes. No one has to have the cutest clothes. There will be other girls who are smart, but…you guessed it! More than one girl can be smart. No one has to be the smartest. There will be other girls who are funny, but…say it with me now…more than one girl can be funny. No one has to be the funniest. Here’s the one exception – you ARE the YOUEST. STAND in your skin, in your light, in your personality — that’s a whole lot to be confident about.

You may remember that I went on a mission to streamline and declutter my life and home prior to our big move, all thanks to Allie Casazza. I slowly and steadily went through many areas of our home and attacked the issue of clutter, disorganization, and, well…too much crap. As we prepared to move into our new home, I knew that we did NOT want to just box up all of our overflowing possessions and stuff them into our new space. We needed to learn how to let go of items we did not need and streamline our “collections” down to what we absolutely loved. It has been a learning experience for the entire family.

 

Our children were on board from the beginning. It makes sense, too. Children are genetically little versions of their parents. They have our DNA. They live with us. They watch us. They listen to us. They pick up on what stresses us out and also on what makes us happy. They are so intuitive. So it stands to reason that if you are a person who is deeply bothered and affected by excess clutter and items lying around, then your children probably are bothered by it, too. They may not be able to verbalize that, and they may even act like it is completely fine to keep living the way that they are, but that’s because they don’t really know better. When you know better, you do better, and that is our job as parents to pass on what we have learned to our children.

 

So, I knew that I was not going to be able to make this change in our family without our children’s blessings. As a result, they became a part of the streamlining of our toys. They had a say in what stayed and what went. They were very excited at the idea of passing their toys onto other children who would enjoy them, and they have truly loved playing with the toys they really love. I haven’t heard them say they missed one single toy that we purged. They still have plenty to play with and are not deprived whatsoever.

 

The toy problem was a great hurdle to clear, but there was one other huge obstacle pertaining to our kids’ clutter that we needed to address.

 

The artwork.

 

If your children are in any kind of school, daycare, or educational program, they are going to create hundreds, if not thousands, of crafts, gifts, and masterpieces throughout the years. They will proudly present them to you and expect that you keep them until you die.

 

And you will want to (mostly…), but if you have more than one child, you will quickly realize that there are not enough totes and storage containers in all the Targets of the world to house all of those artifacts. And even if you buy all of the bins and totes, you still have to find a place to put all of the bins and totes. And make sure you store them in a place that won’t be exposed to water or extreme temperatures or else your precious pieces will be ruined in a matter of time.

 

I was doing the tote method for a while. Each child had a tote that would fit under our bed, and when it was full, we would have to go through it and discard the pieces we didn’t want to keep anymore to make room for the new. This was a decent idea except for the fact that remembering to store the artwork each time something new was brought home (which for us, with three children in school, became almost a daily occurrence) became impossible. I started just stacking papers up on a small counter in our kitchen until I had the time to sort and store them, but soon that became a huge eyesore in our house and just another thing I had to “get to.”

 

In my newfound motivation to declutter and purge, I decided to tackle the kids’ artwork once and for all. I pulled out all of the totes, which somehow had expanded to not just one tote for each child but 2-3 per child, and they were stored under our bed as well as our daughters’ bunk beds. I spent many afternoon nap times going through all of the well-loved pieces and thinking about how I was going to do this.

 

Here are few thoughts that came to mind as I was planning my strategy:

 

1. Wow! Our kids have made some adorable creations! Some of these are actually really cute and pretty. I wish I could see these more often than just when I want to clean out these bins.
2. Darn. Even though these have been in airtight bins inside our home (and not an attic or garage), the paper has started to fade and curl. Glued-on items aren’t staying on, and they are really starting to age…even though at the most they are only 8 years old. What will they look like in 40 years? And why did I keep anything with marshmallows or cereal glued on it? Gross.
3. How in the world are we going to continue to store these works of art for our children when we have four children? We will have a major storage scarcity issue in just a year or two.

 

After all of that thinking, I came up with a plan that would fix all of the above-listed problems. And yes, it involves throwing stuff away.

 

GASP. I KNOW.

 

It was painful to accept, but I needed to part with some (a lot) of these things. However, I felt really good about my plan of attack, and I am here to share it if you struggle with the same issues.

 

All you need are a phone with a good camera (I have an iPhone), the Dropbox app, and the Chatbooks app.

 

My process went as follows:

 

1. Start with one child at a time. I chose my oldest daughter because she had the most to sort through.

2. I sorted all of her artwork into piles.

• One pile for items that probably should never have been saved. If they don’t mean anything to me now, they won’t mean anything to me 10-20-30 years down the line.
• One pile for each grade level, including her daycare and preschool years.

3. I went to my Dropbox account and paid for 1TB of storage (1,000 GB) so that I could upload as many photos as I wanted. It is under $10/month.

4. I made Dropbox folders for each of my children and then made subfolders for each of them for each grade level.

 

 

5. I used a large, white tote lid as a background, and I went to a place in my house where we had good natural light, and I started with her daycare/preschool pile and took an individual photo of each and every item that I loved. I tried to let the artwork take up as much space as possible in the lens of my camera so that I wouldn’t have a ton of cropping & straightening to do after the fact.

6. I created an album on my phone for Noelle’s work and added all of those photos to that album.

7. Before I moved onto the next grade level, I uploaded the images that I just took to the Dropbox app into the appropriate folder.

 

8. I then went to the Chatbooks app and created a custom photo book for these images. I will make a book for each child’s work, split up into 1-2 grade levels at a time. I love Chatbooks because they are small (either 6” or 8” square books), modern, high quality, and perfect for sitting on a bookshelf as they don’t take up much space.

 

9. Once I completed the process, I moved on to the next grade level. Eventually, when I finished all of Noelle’s, I started on Charlotte’s work and repeated the whole process over again.

10. Along the way, I pulled out any item that had a handprint on it. As long as I it was flat and didn’t have something glued to it, I ran it through my letter-size laminator to preserve it. I decided to keep any of these items.

• Notes to Mama, little “I love yous,” and sweetness like that went into my own personal box in my closet. I love to keep things like that.

11. I also pulled out any artwork that was extra special or cool enough to be framed and displayed in our house. I couldn’t believe how many amazing pieces my children had created that were not doing anything except aging in a tote. These needed to be displayed! I set them aside and began collecting frames for them.

 

12. Once I was certain that I photographed and uploaded everything from an entire grade level, I pulled the trigger on ordering the Chatbooks. So far, I have purchased Noelle’s daycare and preschool books as well as her Kindergarten/1st grade book (I combined those two grades) and 2nd grade book. I also just ordered Charlotte’s preschool book since she will soon be entering Kindergarten. The Chatbooks can hold hundreds of photos, but I thought it would be better to stick with 100-150 photos per book so that we could limit the time-frame of each book.

13. I waited until I received the first Chatbooks before tossing the original artwork. I wanted to make sure I was happy with the finished product and the quality of the book. I had already been using Chatbooks for my Instagram photos, and I knew I loved it for that, but I didn’t know how I would feel about these sentimental pieces. My husband and I both agreed that we LOVED the book of artwork and knew this was the way to go for us.

 

 

14. TOSS THE ART WORK. Yep. In the trash. It’s probably best that the kids don’t see you do that.

 

I have now streamlined what was once 8 totes of children’s artwork, school work, certificates, and cards into one small tote of super special things for each child, and a few awesome creations to be framed and displayed in our home.

 

We, as well as our kids, can pick up their art books anytime and view the special pieces and remember the stories behind them. Rather than keep these precious items hidden away in a tote to fade and age (because they will, regardless of how airtight the bin), we are all able to enjoy looking at them as often as we want.

 

We could even print copies of the photographed artwork and enlarge them, frame them, turn them into gifts, etc. I absolutely love that regardless of water damage, fire, dust, heat, or any other force that would destroy the original pieces, we will have a digital record of these precious memories via Dropbox. Even if my phone crashes and I lose all of my photos (oh, that would suck), I have them protected in Dropbox. I also can easily share the images with my husband and extended family.

 

For maintenance, I plan to keep my handy background (the white tote lid) in an easily accessible place. When my children bring home a work of art, I will photograph it as soon as possible, upload it to Dropbox, add it to a Chatbooks photo book, and then pitch it immediately. If I am going to keep it, I will have it framed as soon as I can. If it has a handprint on it, or if it is a Christmas ornament, I will either laminate it (if I can) or store where my other precious ornaments are kept. I will no longer be using the “throw it in a pile on the counter and I will deal with it later” method.

 

I know that this process will not be for everyone. There will many people who have all kinds of feelings about throwing away these items, but this is working for us, and that is what matters to me. If your current “system” is failing you and causing you stress, I highly encourage you to give this a try, too!

 

If you do not already have a Chatbooks account, you can get one here and earn get $10 off your first purchase. When you order your first Chatbooks, I will earn a $15 credit.

 

I recently purchased a ton of frames from IKEA, measured all the artwork I wanted to frame, and ordered mats for each piece. Once all the mats arrive and we get everything framed and hung up, I will create a post with the details!

We recently revealed to our kids that we would be taking a trip to Disney World in just a couple of weeks. We were so excited to tell them as we had been planning the trip for months. I wanted to wait until it was a little closer to departure before telling them since they just don’t have the best concept of time.

I presented them with a large gift bag, and inside the large gift bag was another gift bag. And inside that gift bag was another gift bag. Well, inside the gift bags were also parts of the sentence that said, once put together, “We are going to Disney World!” The girls were at the “we are going to ______” part, and they began to get super excited at the prospect of going to Berry Winkle, which is our local frozen yogurt shop. In my two year lapse in teaching, I had forgotten how truly literal children are, and when you tell them you are going somewhere, you better be taking them right then, and in their minds, the perfect place would be to Berry Winkle.

So when my oldest, who could read, saw that the card said “Disney World,” she presented me with a face full of confusion and quite honestly…disappointment. She really wanted to go to Berry Winkle. And you see, the grand finale of the present game was a paper chain that I slapped together moments before this spectacle with 18 links of construction paper taped together — one for each day before we leave. Shiloh, who is three years old, kept saying, “That was it? That was it?” (referring to the chain). Apparently, in her literal mind, a paper chain was not the “gift” she was expecting to receive.

I will chalk this one up to a parent fail. It definitely wasn’t your Disney Christmas commercial where there kids start crying and jumping up and down and the husband and wife hug romantically in the corner. Nope. At our house, we believe that big moments should really be shit shows, and why change our ways now?

We have all gotten over the initial shock and disappointment (on both sides), and now the kids are super excited to be leaving in a couple of weeks. They happily tear off a link of their paper chain each morning, making sure all three of them are there to take part.

I am now in the thick of making sure we have everything we need prior to leaving. I just ordered a fanny pack, which I am probably inappropriately excited about. I have started thinking about outfits and meals and all that comes with the planning of a family Disney trip.

It got me thinking about our last two trips to Disney World. We went once when my oldest was three (I wrote several blog posts about it, too). We went again when my oldest was five. And now we are going when my oldest is eight. I am excited to see how her interests have changed over the years. But mostly? I am excited to take pictures with my children.

Yes, with my children. Not just of my children. With my children. Because as I was combing through our past photographs, I found a mere handful of photos that I took with my kids on our first trip nearly five years ago, and I didn’t find any of my children with me from our last trip. Sure, I had pictures of them with every Disney character and princess you could find, but none of them with me. They had picture-perfect outfits and exceptionally adorable autographed items and everything was just so…but where was I? Why wasn’t I photographed with them?

There are two explanations for this phenomenon. The first is that I am the photographer of the family. I do it not only for fun but as a business. So when anyone needs photographed, I am the default person to get the job done. I am also a bit of a control freak and don’t trust my husband’s knowledge of the rule of thirds or composition or honestly just the ability to get the red box in the viewfinder on my face so that I am in focus and the background is not.

The second explanation as to why I am not in any photos with my children from our last couple of Disney trips is that I simply cannot stand the way I look. There, I said it. Like a lot of women, I battle pretty severe insecurity regarding my appearance. I will take a photograph of myself and critique it up one side and down the other. I will find hairs out of place on my head, zits on my face, a double chin, a back roll, a chubby thigh. You name it, and I will find it. I will see a belly pooch sticking over my shorts or I will detest the way my nostrils flare out when I am really, really laughing hard.

It’s a sickness. And unfortunately, it has kept me from being captured in time by photographs as I enjoy these memorable, fun trips with our children. My kids will look back on these photos one day, long after the actual first-hand memories of the trips have faded, and think, “Where was Mama?”

And the saddest, silliest part about it all is that to my children, I AM the Disney princess! They think I am beautiful! All children think their mamas are beautiful! They don’t see what I see. They don’t see stray hairs or a muffin top or a double chin! They see their mama. They love me. They want pictures with me.

They don’t know that there may be a part of their future that I will not be a part of. They don’t know that someday all they will have are these photographs. But I do. I do know this — and it is my job to make sure that they have photos with their mama. Thirty pounds heavier than what I want to be. Imperfect skin. Gray hairs poking through. But this year, it’s going to happen. I’m going to be in the photos.

Here’s a little note to the significant others:

Take the photo.

Even when she says, “No, I’m too fat.” Even when she says, “No, my outfit isn’t right.” Even when she says, “No, I don’t have makeup on.”

Take the photo.

Take her phone and do it, or use your phone and do it. There’s no excuse not to be documenting what you see — the way her children look at her. The way they giggle when she tickles them or squeal when she scares them or the way their hands look on the back of her neck when she holds them. She will want to see these things. I promise you this.

Take the photo.

She may put up a little resistance at first, but 5, 10, 15 years from now, she will love that you insisted that she be in the photos, too. These moments are so fleeting. Appearances are fleeting, too. She may not like the way she looks right now, but it likely won’t be what she looks like forever, and her children will want to remember her this way.

Please, just take the freaking photo.