Our Vacation Scrapbook (2011!!)

Never let it be said that I don't know that I'm a procrastinator. I know it, admit it and embrace it. I try not to be, but to no avail. So, having said that, here is a picture of our vacation scrapbook from July 2011 (bear with me, this is a rather long post!).

At first glance you may think this looks incomplete, and you would be right. However, it is organized...a little bit...in my head! I mean there is a beginning and an end. Dive in with me, I'll show you!

***********************************************************************************************************
Here we have the beginning. The blank composition notebook, the foundation of the scrapbook!

Next we have the pictures. To me, the pictures are the core of the scrapbook. They are the one item that sparks the memory and helps us to visualize the events!

If you've been reading this blog at all, you will know that we had a computer crash in March and when it crashed, we lost all of our pictures from 2011 and the beginning of 2012 (we had moved all of our pictures from 2003-2010 to an offline storage location so we still have those!). Thankfully, I actually did NOT procrastinate on getting the pictures together for our book. I printed the pics the week that we got home, because that's when we were going to work on the book! So, I've got plenty of pics for this book, and these are the only copies we have!

************************************************************************************************************
This vacation was the first trip that we've taken in about 5 years, and we had all 5 kids with us to that was interesting to say the least. We started by going up to Wisconsin Dells and then over to Cleveland OH to visit Aunt Bev and Uncle Ben, via Chicago. We were only gone from Tuesday to Sunday, but we did ALOT of traveling with the kids. I will say, they loved it and have been asking when we're going back! Not this year kiddos, we're going camping in a cabin at Jellystone park this year and we need to get last year's scrapbook finished before that!!
************************************************************************************************************

So, moving on...we have a large collection of brochures from the attractions we went to while we were gone...

One of the attractions we went to was Chula Vista Resort which is an indoor/outdoor waterpark. It was too cold and rainy to go outside, but inside was awesome and every single one of the kids (including mom and dad!) loved it.

We have a collection of postcards we bought along the way...

And brochures and menus from some of the restuarants where we ate...

With all of this paraphernalia we should have no problem remembering everything that we did on vacation (almost a year ago!) right? Right, but who wants to risk it...not us, we kept a diary of sorts. That would be me, just keeping track of everything in my notebook!

I see in my diary notes a reminder that we were counting silos. On the way from Fort Wayne to Wisconsin Dells, in order to keep the kids entertained a bit, we counted any water towers that we saw. While driving from Wisconsin Dells to Chicago, we tried counting silos but I think we all lost track (or interest) around silo number 75 or 80!
We also kept a list of the license plates that we saw along the way...

And a map of our route...

We have an armband and discharge instruction sheet from our little side trip to the ER in Ashtabula, OH while visiting Aunt Bev and Uncle Ben!! Zachary was 6 weeks old and got a fever of 104+ that wouldn't break. They tested him for all kinds of things including menegitis, which all came back negative. We never did find out what was wrong with him. Poor little thing!!

And finally, the things that will make the pages pretty! Embellishments!!

There ya have it, I told you it was all clear in my head! Now I just need to get it all put together. I will be in Chicago this weekend, so I won't be working on it until after that, but I will get started on Monday. I promise! Stay tuned to this blog to see my progress! Thanks for stopping by!