Intrepid Murmurings

Sometime in the last year or so, a new library opened up near us. Really close -- I'd say a 5 minute drive!  I'd been meaning to go to the Greenbridge Library with my girls for awhile, but kept forgetting or feeling not up for it since I knew I would have to get a new library card there since its in a different system than our other one (I know, big roadblock, ha ha).  One free morning I finally made good on my plans and actually got us there, soon after the library opened.  

The  Greenbridge community in White Center was previously public housing that was taken down and totally redone as "mixed income community" featuring green building techniques.  There are various types of housing in this very walkable community as well as an elementary school, a community center, the library & a YMCA "learning center", a playground (which I JUST discovered online, and need to go check out!!!), a fabulous coffeshop, and tons more spaces for retail (which have been empty and I hope fill up, soon!).  

We parked close to the library and went there first.  Its a pretty tiny library, but has a cute well stocked children's section, a fair number of computers, and lots of new, interesting media (CDs and DVDs) that caught my eye.  The girls and I had fun choosing a bunch of books for checkout, and the library was not crowded so the librarians had plenty of time to help us (which is appreciated, when I am herding two toddlers who are starting to get bored...).  

We dropped off the books in the car and then wandered off to explore.  Next to the library and community center is a large, open pavillion that is great for letting the kiddies loose.  There were cement benches and walls to climb on, intersting things on the ground, fun structures overhead, and a really cool (and huge!) piece of public art to enjoy. 

When we (inevitably) started getting antsy and hungry, we headed over to check out the Dubsea Coffee Shop, which I had heard good things about.  What a great coffeehouse!  Yummy food, great art, and it even had toys!  We didn't check those out this time -- we got an italian soda and cookie to share, and enjoyed them the civilized way, sitting at a table with chairs.  I will totally be back, with kids and without -- this place was nice!!!  

After that we headed back to the car (slowly!) with Emma hijacking my camera to take a few photos of her own, including this nice grass shot. Thats my girl -- I've always loved the plant closeups, myself! 

Lately, I have been feeling swamped by media.  Not TV, Internet, radio, magazines and the like (though the latter is kind of overwhelming sometimes, even though I only subscribe to a few!) but more my the media that blossoms with parenthood -- digital photos and videos -- and one that perhaps is becoming obsolete, but I still cling to -- old fashioned CDs.  

With those first two (photos and home video), I feel like my generation is kind of charting new waters here -- the old fashioned musty photo albums with photos stuck in between sheets of plastic are a thing of the past.  We have thousands and thousands of photos documenting our kids' childhoods, which is awesome on one hand.  But.  As the keeper of such things (for the time being anyway), I feel like I need to figure out a meaningful way to manage, display and preserve them.  

CDs 

Right now I have three boxes of CDs that I need to organize and put into big CD wallets (I've already done about 1/3 of them).  I ditch the cases, and many (but not all) of the liner notes.  For more than two years, I have been living without access most of my music -- thanks to half of them being "lost" in the depths of our attic after our move (back when I was hugely pregnant, and not participating in much of the packing and unpacking!) and the rest being fairly inaccessible to me on Lonnie's computer.  

That music is there, and I an access it via a program on my computer, but I find I rarely want to listen to music on my laptop (I don't have decent speakers, just the internal ones).   All his music is in a format that is incompatible with Itunes (flac, which is lossless & therefore the best for sound quality), which means no putting it on my Ipod, burning a new CD, yada yada yada.  Sigh.  

The project that is looming though, that I MUST break down and tackle, is sorting all these CDs alphabetically & by genre, getting them into the wallets.  I have a couple big 300+ ones and several several ones for the kids.   I also got one with a bunch of "removable wallets" with space for 10 or so CDs to put in the car, to take on trips, and to keep near our kitchen CD player.  It shouldn't be that hard, its just one of those projects that doesn't work well with kids around, and since I don't have a space to leave it out away from them, I kind of need to do in one (long) sitting.  Blah.  It will feel so good when its done, though!  Soooo very tired of this taking up space in my living room...

Home Videos

Videos also are proving a challenge -- I love taking them of the kids, and adore having these little memories saved for the future.  It is so amazing to watch ones when the girls were littler -- seeing what they did and said, remembering those times, OMG, love it.  But, I don't love dealing with with the actual video files (which can be huuuuuge!).  

Even though I don't think I take tons of video, they were rapidly filling up my laptop.   Lonnie recently got an external drive to store them on, which has solved one issue.  Lots of space now!  But, downloading them, renaming them in a way that makes them easy to find again (with dates & descriptions) takes time.  There are tons of old ones I still need to go through, separating out events, editing, etc.  I'd love to got through and edit them down a bit (mostly just cutting out the boring or unusable parts) and I also would love to get them all on DVDs, maybe organized by year or something.  Lonnie thinks DVD's are not the best way to store media, which I suppose I understand, but I still feel like I'd like to have hard copies as well as having them all stored on our computer drives.  Don't you think?  What do you do with home videos?  

Digital Photographs

And then there's photos.  Man, do I take a lot of photos!  I just want to capture these precious moments, document our daily life, so I can remember it and pass it along to my girls.  Photos remind me about so many things I otherwise would forget -- they feel so priceless to me. But right now, most of them are just sitting on my computer, not getting looked at.  

Right now I try to edit them somewhat upon download or soon after -- deleting bad ones, cropping & some amateur-ish editing to enhance color & contrast, lighting, etc.  I try to download off the cameras every few days, and then upload most of them to our gallery (hosted on our server computers here at home) once they are edited (which I can then easily use on my blog if needed).  They are all, obviously, also on my laptop.  I NEED to back them up somewhere else, though.  

I also want to print out a bunch of pictures, some high quality prints for framing and hanging (I'd like to do several photo walls in our home), some smaller ones for photo flip books for the kids, which they ADORE.  I have plans to create more printed photo books, too -- I was really happy with the Blurb book I made of the babies first 6 months, but just haven't found the time since then (no hours upon hours in the nursing chair with laptop, ha ha).  Anyone have other photo display ideas for me?  Are those digital photo frame things worth having?  I tend to use my screen saver as one -- it automatically shows photos from one year ago, which is pretty great -- I love seeing what we were doing a year ago, and to see how much the girls have grown!  

So, here is my short list of things to do in the media management arena:

• Organize CDs into wallets
• Label, name & organize videos
• Burn videos to DVDs?
• Backup photos & videos (On disks?  Online?  Off-site somewhere?)
• Print photos, frame & hang some, put some into kid-friendly albums
• Create (and have printed) photo books, spanning increments of 6 months to a year 

Last year, we bought a new Bunny Bun Bun off Craigslist to replace our very dear lost Bunny Bun Bun the First.  BBB II surprised us by being larger and light brown, unlike BBB the First's small stature and pink fur (the pics looked the same in the ad).  He took some getting used to, but now BBB II is a Very Beloved Bun, much like his predecessor.  I remember this day well, still -- it was a great morning!    

Last week in a semi-desperate moment (I had been shut in with sick kids for at least 5 days) we got groceries delivered from Amazon Fresh.  LOVE them -- I ordered before 10am and they were delivered by 5 the same day!  While this was what saved my sanity in the baby twin days,  its more of a treat now.  I try to get things on sale and shop in bulk and discount places mostly (Safeway, Costco, Grocery Outlet) since our food bill with 5 eaters can get HUUUUUUGE. 

The cold things from Amazon always get packaged in insulated bags or coolers with huge chunks of dry ice.  Lonnie cannot help but play with it, every time.  Its obviously not something you want the kids to touch, so he had it at the bottom of our deep sink with just a little water, and impressed upon them the importance of not reaching down to touch the water (Elsie's and Delia's arms are too short, anyway, I think).  Here's some of pictures of the fun.   Elsie is in the pink dress, Delia is on the far side, Emma, standing tall in the middle.

How lucky we are to have such a great park just minutes from our house.  I know I have posted photos from here before, and will again -- we have such fun every time we go! The last shot is the view from our lunch table -- how can you go wrong with that!  

Linking up with my Wordless Wednesday friends at A Lot of Loves and HoboMama, go there for more great photographs.   

Man do we love this place!  Its part of the Tukwila Community Center here in South Seattle.  So far all three times we've gone its been nearly or totally empty!  

This post is linked up with my other Wordless Wednesday compatriots at Hobo Mama and A Lot of Loves -- check out more over at their lovely blogs!

PLAY!  

I know I've posted this one before, but this week's photo challenge over at i heart faces is PLAY, and I just could not resist.  Boy, are we hoping the sunny days come back so we can do more of this, pronto!   Lots more great play photos at i heart faces, too.  Just discovered this site today, and it looks great!

For West Seattlites, its the newly redesigned Steve Cox Memorial Park in White Center.  Super close to us, and awesome! 

This post is linked to Wordless Wednesday posts at A Lot of Loves and 5 Minutes for Mom

About a year ago, the lovely Mona came over and took some photos of the girls. And in celebration of Mona and babies (her baby boy TJ was born LAST NIGHT!) I'll post some of my favorites.  I can't believe its been a year -- look at those gummy smiles and bald-ish heads!  I miss them (but not the sleep I wasn't getting, ha ha).  Thanks again, Mona, and congrats!

That last one is Elsie walking backwards, for fun. Silly kid.

Fun in the sun!  Yay spring!

Elsie in white, Delia in blue.  Emma in tie dye!   

Emma's been at it again! These were from last weekend -- an awesome, sunny day spent outside. They are from underneath our play structure.  

This week, at the constant (but gentle) prodding of my instructor from the parenting class I have been taking, we had our first "family meeting". Apparently having these meetings is one of the single best predictors of happier families (or success with positive discipline? I am forgetting the specific factoid), and one of the main lasting things she hoped we took away from the class.  Her personal account of how family meetings helped her family was REALLY persuasive, so we are giving it a go.  

At the start, she suggests only having everyone give each other compliments, then plan something fun to do together during the coming week. Eventually (once the kids buy into the family meeting concept and associate it as a fun/positive thing), you can start addressing other issues that come up (problems put on an agenda) during the week as well.  Sibling issues, behavior stuff, all that can be addressed, making sure everyone is heard and part of the solution.  As kids get older you can also address meal plans, chores, scheduling for the week, etc. But with kids as little as ours, its mostly about compliments and family time planning right now, ha ha!  And eating delicious treats such as brownies. 

This week, we all easily agreed on our outing -- riding the light rail train!  All three girls were excited and so was I!  The light rail is new here in Seattle, and has a stop not too far from us (10 min or so).  I found a really great guide online over at Delicious Baby (here's part one, and part two) that listed stuff to do with kids at each of the stops, so we chose something and off we went!  

We parked at the Tukwila Station (closest to us and with a big free parking lot) and got off at the Othello Station.  We walked a block or so over to Othello Park, enjoyed snacks and the playground (including a Very Big Slide that I unfortunately didn't get pictures of) and then went back to the station and hopped aboard the next train back.  The girls LOVED it!  All three were all smiles, and Delia couldn't sit still until she got her very own seat on the train.  She fell asleep on the way home in our car, but when she woke up she immediately said "train track!".

Here are some pictures of our outing (no pics of me, but I promise I was there too!).  Even the escalators were a hit!  Now that I've been able to scope it out, I intend to take the girls myself midweek a lot more.  I want to check out the other stations, and maybe go all the way downtown!  

Heading up the escalator to Tukwila Station

Running across the field at Othello Park

Delia on the slide!  

Three kids in a tree!  Emma was the least impressed with this photo op.  Elsie looks a little confused about the whole ordeal.  Delia was totally happy just hung out until we got her down. 

When Delia gets us all sick in another week or so, this will be why. 

Heading home.   

 Delia tooting her horn

My kids have no idea these things actually go if you put money in them...

All three on the merry-go-round!  

Emma on the merry-go-round 

On Grandma's front porch swing  

Talking a walk with Grandma