I haven't checked this blog in awhile and I had to laugh that the last post was about my efforts to put pictures from the last Europe trip into some kind of order. I lamented my failure to take notes last time, kicking myself for not writing something to remember what the pictures were of. I swore I would try to do it better this time.
Well, "this time" has come and gone. We are back from Europe, our wallets lighter, our bones wearier and our laundry baskets full. I spent days combing through the bags of souvenirs, printing out pages with names of friends and family on them, in order to sort the goodies for each. My living room floor is now covered with half-packed boxes waiting to find their way to Ohio and Pennsylvania. We ordered wine and Ouzo which has found its way here from Greece and Florence and now waits for me to figure out how to get it to other states. I spent a week doing laundry, washing and folding and putting it all away. We took a pile of shirts and skirts and suits to the dry cleaner and await its return.
And then there are the memories. The pictures, the thoughts, the words. I took notes on a scrap of paper on the ship, after we spent a day in Rome with a tour guide. I was trying to soak up his stories, to be able to remember every little detail of what he said. I even did it while looking at the pictures, putting the numbers of each picture with the note. I have yet to go back and make sense of my notes, but I will.
I am proud to say that I made a point to take a picture of Rob or Brooklyn, or both, or have someone take a picture of all of us (or let Rob touch my camera and take a picture of me and B) in every place we stopped. Brooklyn has quite the album to show her friends, pictures of her in front of the Eiffel Tower, the L'Arc de Triomphe, the Parthenon, Big Ben, the Tower Bridge... an the list goes on. I sat down one night and spent a few hours going through the pictures to print hers for her, and still only got to Florence.
I averaged about 250 pictures a day, depending on where we were. More in Paris, less in Barcelona. But I got them. These days, I'm spending minutes and hours uploading them all to Snapfish, where I will then comb through them to decide what to print. At this point, I think I need to print them all and then sort them when they are in-hand. Much easier than looking at a one inch square "thumbnail," I think.
Did I do better this time? That remains to be seen. I'm still trying to clean up the "mess" from the last trip, having run out of room in the albums I bought and only just yesterday discovering the new manufacturer of those albums in order to order another. (Thanks to my scrapbooking friends who shared the info!) I think I did a better job of taking more pictures of us, and not so many of places or things (our trip to the Vatican aside.) Then again, people get frustrated when you ask them to pose alot, so I found myself taking 1 or 2 pics of the people and 10 or 12 of the place, and it'll all come together in the books. I hope.
I am still working on the story. I started to type it out, using my notes from the trip (I took little index cards with me and tried to write at the end of each day - I made it to about Florence, or maybe Naples or Monte Carlo.) There were certainly memorable moments to capture, such as how a piece of Mom and Dad's luggage went to Boston instead of Paris, or how the hotel we were booked into in Paris had a flood and no air conditioning and had to move us to a different hotel (which ended up being on the Champs E'lysee.) There were Brooklyn's escapades on the ship- her tantrums, her nap at the dinner table, and her dancing with her daddy in her formal gown. There were the drinks on the ship at 5 or 6 pm, complete with a plate of nachos, watching whatever city we happened to be in drift away in the waning sunlight. I must capture those memories soon, before they too fade. So what am I doing sitting here, typing this?
O.k., back to reality and my notes. I promise myself that I'm going to get the notes of the trip down... soon. And if I don't, maybe I'll borrow Phil's. He was a little better about it than I was, and rumor has it that he has 2 or 3 pages of notes. Then again, they had a bit of a different trip than we did, theirs not being completely ruled by the presence of a little princess. So we'll see. In the meantime, I've got to go order the pictures, since I already ordered the albums.
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