The First Day of your Life

Let's create a page about the first day of your life.  Find a hospital baby picture or a newborn picture.
I scanned mine into my computer (it was a black and white print).  I then printed it out on 8x8 cream colored or light tan cardstock.  It gave it an aged look which I liked.  You could have added some WordArt of your name and maybe the date of birth too.  The second page can be statistics like birth weight, length, doctor, parents, grandparents names, etc.  In my album I added a page of things that were happening in the world on that date (year or month).  These dates in time can be found from websites.  For example http://dmarie.com/timecap/ is a great one.  At this site you can type in your date and it allows you to choose news headlines, famous people with the same birthdate, popular songs, popular TV shows, toys, books.  It also gives you a list of average prices of things for that time period.  This can be printed out for you to put in your album.

I will post my layout later today.  If you would like to email me a newborn layout of you, I might be inclined to add it to my blog.  comecropwithme@kc.rr.com

Darlene Lundgren

Darlene Lundgren was my mother.  Taken from me and all her family and friends too early at the age of 57.  Today, October 20, is the anniversary of her death.  She battled metastatic breast cancer for 17 years.  When she was first diagnosed with breast cancer, I was only 20 years old.  It never really hit me that she could actually die from it.  She had a lumpectomy with radiation and was clean for 9 years.  That 9th year she was visiting us in FL and I noticed that one of her breasts was smaller than the other.  I kinda teased her about it, but told her that she needed to see her doctor.  Sure enough - the cancer was back.  She proceeded to have a mastectomy with reconstruction and chemotherapy and radiation to follow.  You know . . . even then at 29 years old I still didn't think that I could lose my mom to this horrible disease.  She was a fighter.  I never imagined that I could lose her.  It wasn't until a few years later when she called me to tell me she had some more tests run and they found breast cancer in her lungs - it had spread.  Then it hit me.  The cancer continued to spread over the years to her liver and bones.  One time she said her scans lit up like a Christmas tree (showing all the cancer spots). 

She never complained.  When I called to see how she was, she always said she was fine.  On several occasions I told her to tell me - really tell me.  Tell me that she felt like crap and she just wanted to sit and cry - or tell me that she was angry with God for doing this to her or - tell me anything.  But she kept going on with life.  She always said that there was nothing she could do about it, so why sit and cry.  Off and on for years she endured chemotherapy and radiation and other medications.  One of the meds caused her feet to swell and cause her pain, but she kept going to work and walking in pain.  She never let on how bad it hurt. 

I still feel so much guilt for not being with her in those last months and weeks.  Either I was in denial or she just let on that everything was okay or both.  I'm angry at my other family members for not telling me of her decline.  I knew when the hospital bed was brought in that it was just a matter of time, but again maybe just the denial or the fact that she was so strong . . . maybe she would fight it?  I just know that I still beat myself up about it.  We could have had some great conversations in that time. 

I arrived two days before her death.  We were just coming for a visit and had no idea it would be our last.  On our drive there, we received a phone call that said her time was very limited.  What a shock - I knew she was declining but not that fast.  First they said she would be gone before Thanksgiving - well that was still a month away - okay - I would spend the rest of that time with her.  Then when I got there they were saying she probably wouldn't last another two weeks - - then probably not through the weekend.  How did it go from another month with her to just a few days to just a few hours? 

We talked and she joked - "why are all these people coming around.  You'd think I was dying."  She said she thought she had more time - that it was all happening so fast.  Mostly I helped to finalized all the paperwork that needed to be done for her retirement and will, etc.  She died that night.  Denise and Grandma were on one side of her and I was on the other.  Grandpa was at the foot of the bed and Dad off the side a bit.  I told her that we were all there and we were ready and that she could let go whenever she was ready.  A few moments, then she was gone.  I will never forget.

Didn't Happen

I haven't posted anything to this since my last post in Sept. 2007.  Wow - - - time has flown.
Our church group no longer scrapbooks together, but I do however occasionally get together with my girlfriends to scrapbook.  Our group used to get together once a month, but as life goes . . . our regular events seem farther apart.  I will still post ideas on Creating the story of you.  Keep watching.

New To This

This is my first blogging experience.
I started taking an Advanced Composition class tonight. The teacher mentioned blogger.com was a great place to share your thoughts. Thought I would check it out, so here I am.
I am an avid scrapbooker. I am addicted you could say.
I am one of the leaders of my church scrapbooking group and we are starting a new project on scrapbooking about yourself. I thought this would be a great place to document our progress and the ideas we have shared with each other.
Share with you soon.