Rainy Wednesday

Today's high temperature was: 61 degrees

Rainy and cold

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I'm afraid I may have offended my blogging buddy Sally.  She had posted about her great grand daughter's end of school program.  Apparently every school in Florida has a big program and the kids are given certificates--"diploma's" for graduating from their grade.  The family members bring balloons and flowers and give to the child.  It IS a big deal.

I had never heard of any kind of school graduation other than Kindergarten, 8th grade and high school and I wondered why.  In this area, the school's have end of year programs, but it is for individual merit--like winning the spelling bee, or highest grade point, school crossing guard, who read the most books. 

She explained it well and you can be sure, if they had something like that here, I'd be at the program with balloons or flowers or whatever for my grandchild!  Keep up the tradition!
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I remembered late Sunday night that I had forgotten to put Madeleine's graduation album together!  For every grandchild, I take all the pictures of them and me and put the pix in an album entitled, "Gramma & Me" and give to them at their open house.  I had been real good about saving the photos of us on the computer in their album.  For some reason, the save pix I had of Madeleine ended around 2010.

Monday morning I got up early and started in.  I had to search all other place in My Pictures to see where I had pix of Maddie and me--like my Blog or in with the Rivard Family file.  Plus I had to search a lot of my hard copy scrapbook albums. 

When I found a hard copy photo that I didn't have on the computer, I had to scan it, name it and put it in her computer album.  This took most of Monday morning.

Monday afternoon, I ran up town, got a new, full color ink jet, some photo paper and an album.

Monday night, I was up late, dragging all the computer pictures from other places into her file.
Then I printed them all out on a contact sheet so I could see them, and write down the numbers to put them in order.

Tuesday morning, I went into her picture file, and got them in order.  It was kind of hard because I couldn't really easily tell what year the photo was.  So I had to look.  Did she have braces?  Then photo came after the one where here teeth were kind of crooked and BEFORE the photo where her teeth were perfect.  Was her hair longer in this one, then in the other.  Okay, the shorter hair photo came before the longer hair photo.

Finally got them sorted.

...and printed out another contact page to study and make sure.

I then went into Pix Monkey and brought in some photos that I wanted to put text on and then re-save them.

Then it was time to print out the 90+ photos.  I set the printer to print best and 4 photos to a sheet.  I only printed one sheet (4 photos) at a time to make sure they were all right.

I also had to find the computer file where I had written her birth poem acrostic, cross stitch.  I wanted to paste it on the inside cover of the photo.

Hours--and I mean HOURS later, I had my sheets of photos and time to cut them out and put them in order in her album.

Actually, I sat in my recliner and did this while I watched the baseball game.  :-)

This morning, I put the final pictures in.  Now, I am going to download the photos onto a disc because in the back of the album is a pocket to put a CD in.  YAY.

 I don't know why these two pictures turned out turned when I posted them here--they are right-side up on the my picture file?  Blogger--do you have a problem?
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I feel really bad--Maddie had a French Horn recital in the summer, at the home of her private instructor--along with Brian and Drew who had the same teacher (and are now in band together).  

Fred had taken some cute pictures of them and of her and me.  I found the recital program in my hard copy scrapbook, but no pictures.  I have searched my computer and there are no pix of that event.  Fred had saved his pictures on discs and I went through all of them, to no avail.  The only thing I can think of, they were still ON his computer and when his son came the night of Fred's funeral, he took Fred's computer.  So--those pix are lost to me.  Kind of brought tears to my eyes when I realized.
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I had to run up to Discount Tire today to check my drivers side front tire.  I had all my tires aired up two weeks ago and it had less air than the rest of them.  I noticed it looked a little low today.  They aired it up for me and I have an appointment tomorrow afternoon to go in and have the wheel removed to check.  Probably a dent in the rim from a pot hole incident?  I hope that is all--I sure can't afford a new tire.

I did manage to save $100.00 to put in Maddie's grad card.  I have given each kid that amount.  Now, 12 years ago, when I gave my eldest grand child that amount, it was a big deal.  Not so much nowadays, but it is all I can wrestle up.  I have saved money since January to even get that much.  She will appreciate it anyway--she would be appreciative if I only gave her $20.00.

Flo--you wanted to know Maddie's plans?  She doesn't quite know what she wants to study.  In September, she will be going to Community College and study health/nursing and then in January, she will be going to Guatemala on a mission, to teach, take care of--help the people there.  It is NOT through her church, which surprised me.  Something like the Peace Corps of the '60's.  I am assured she will be safe.

When her mother, Karen, voiced some concern, I said, "Well, it is your fault that she wants to do this.  Ever since the kids were little, every Thanksgiving you went as a family to the center and worked in the kitchen to feed the homeless.  Every summer, for the past five years, as a family, you have gone into the inner city of Detroit, to help with the community gardens, clean and board up abandoned houses, and clean up old tires from vacant lots."

Karen nodded.

"You have taught her, by example, how to be a loving, caring, giving person...wanting to help others, so.....that's exactly what she is going to do.  Perhaps she will become a Nun."

Karen said, "You mean a Sister."

I said, "Whatever they're called."