Our Living Room that's Full of Life

As I've been printing, organizing, and storing years' worth of family photos for my card catalogue photo drawer project, I've noticed a pretty glaring pattern:

There are a LOT of photos of my kids.

That, in itself, isn't a problem, because I do want the kids to have lots of photos of their childhoods. The problem is that there are MOSTLY photos of my kids. There are barely photos of Matt. There are barely photos of our house and yard and the places that we frequent. There are barely photos of our friends and family. There are even more barely any photos of me.

So that's one of my resolutions from now on--to use my photographs to keep a better record of our lives. And in the spirit of that resolution, I'm not just deleting this quick snapshot that I took of the living room in order to test my camera lens that's been acting wonky.

I'm annotating it!

We've definitely got plenty of mess on display. Post-lunch, the kids neglected to clear their plates. Post-art, the colored pencils are still on the table. Post-music, there's that keyboard, and it looks like it's even still on, just running the batteries down!

We've also got tons of negligent housekeeping going on. I should figure out how to make the kitties stop scratching the couch corner. I should take down the paper chain and update the kids' artwork. I should get rid of those magazines, because lord knows the last time that I looked at them.

There is life, though, in this messy, negligently maintained living room. The keyboard and laptop are from Syd's keyboard lesson. The catnip mouse is Gracie's favorite toy. The workboxes and files show just how important our school is to us.The easel is part of the kids' display for the Science Fair later that night. They built the snap circuit radio over the weekend, and haven't stopped listening to it since.

I also love the stories that this photo tells. That morning, Will colored a picture from her gargoyles and medieval monsters coloring book, then showed it to me. I noticed the caption that said it was a gargoyle from Rouen Cathedral, and exclaimed, "Hey, I've been there! And hey! So have YOU!" I got down the photo album/travel journal that I made after our trip to France when Will was eight months old, and found the page from Rouen. Wouldn't you know it, I have a photo that I took of THAT gargoyle on THAT cathedral!

So there you go, Kids. Our living room was super messy while you were growing up. You didn't clean up enough, and I didn't organize. We all spoiled the cats. But you can definitely tell that we did a lot of living here in this living room.