Is this a 3 year old or....

a beaten wife?

Edited - to correct to 3 year old & 3rd birthday...

This picture is just wrong on so many levels....

But it still makes me laugh.  This was me on my 3rd birthday.  I don't remember the full story, but the way I remember the story as told to me was that a few days before my birthday my mom and dad were washing down the driveway and washing my Dad's truck.  I think they told me not to do it, but I climbed up in the bed of the truck, and very obviously fell and gave myself a black eye.

It required a trip to the emergency room.  My mom said they were questioned about it to make sure they didn't do this to me (they didn't). If I remember right I may have had a concussion. Now I know what's wrong with me. LOL!

I do remember later that evening, being on the couch with a big ice bag on my face.  Then a few days later I got to celebrate turning 3 looking like this.

The iron, just add's to the image. Even more so, since I can't remember the last time I ironed anything.

Over the past 8 months, I have been working through the 23,000+ pictures stored on my computer and cataloged in Adobe Lightroom.  Last year I scanned all of my pre-digital pictures, as well as those I had from my mom.  I have spent tons of hours organizing these pictures by date, tagging them with who, what and a bit of where. Rating the best to cull them down, deleting bad pictures that just are not worth keeping.

Why did I do this? Well for a few reasons...

• This process is making it easier to find the stories from my childhood and family history that I want to tell. 
• I want to enjoy these pictures.  I can have them scrolling through a slide show on our digital frames and computer screen savers.
• I have shared many of them with my parents and siblings.
• I also think at the rate we take photos today. my boys will end up with hundreds of thousands of images from their family history. I don't want them to be so overwhelmed by the thought of it that they do nothing with them or worse delete them. Because they may not appreciate what they have until after I am gone.  At that point they would be left wondering who the people in the photos are.  The task to organize them at that point would be daunting, and likely never done.  

I am establishing a process that I can maintain.  And while I was already well on my way, I am loving the  class that Kayla Lamoreaux  is offering on her site for Lightroom organization.  She started with digital scrapbooking supplies, but has just moved into the photo organization module. And amazingly she is giving this class for FREE. If you have any desire to improve your photo organization, I strongly suggest you check it out. Even if you use a different organization program she has a lot of really great methods for organizing your photos.