Nifty Fifty

Thanks to a day off Friday I arrived promptly at noon to board the Queen of the Crop. Tropical shirt? Check. Leis? Check. Boarding Pass? Check. (Good thing since our cruise directors would not let us "board" without them!)

Photos were required at check-in. I made sure my favorite cruise director posed with me. Since Becky turned 50 this past week, this was like taking a birthday cruise with her! Nifty.

Naturally, the weather was gorgeous this weekend – in the 50s – just because I had no time to enjoy it. And by enjoy it, I simply mean taking a walk or two. A person does not get many steps during scrapbooking weekend...

...As you can tell from this "action" shot! Yup, there are usually about 50 of us getting together to sit in our places and stare at our own photos. Ha, well, not that bad. But mostly we are all on a mission to get pages done. We do walk around to get creative ideas and our cruise directors provided some entertainment.

As it turned out, I didn't get a chance to wear my ugly Goodwill formal. My stepson #2, Clay, was home from North Dakota for the weekend so the Austin clan got together for dinner at Ida's to see him and meet his girlfriend. So great to have my four favorite Austin men together again for the first time in well over a year. It was worth it to miss the fashion show and take a break from scrapbooking memories to MAKE memories.

 

After dinner we went over to Jim's parents' house to have cake to celebrate February (Colin) and March (Casey and mom-in-law) birthdays.

If you heard that the fire danger was high on the west side of Rapids last night, that would be why. Had a quick piece of carrot cake (that's correct, my Weight Watchers program did not go on the cruise or ashore with me) then headed back to the Lions Camp in Rosholt.

Camp is less than an hour away so I didn't lose a ton of scrapping time but enough that I knew I better make pretty good progress before going to bed. And by pretty good progress, I mean stay up until 7 a.m. so the book is basically done.

I don't think I've pulled an all-nighter since college. I wasn't tired so much as my back and legs and everything was hurting. I did not want to quit with only 3 pages to go! But I took a 3 1/2-hour nap and showered before finishing strong.

I now have Carter's school scrapbooks done from kindergarten up to his decision two weeks ago to go to UW-Platteville next fall! That's 50 pages done this weekend (mostly junior and senior year). Am I the queen of the crop or what? Can I get a "heck, yeah!"?

Am I going to be sound asleep by 8 p.m. tonight? Heck, yeah!

Well, I am going to peek in on the Oscars for a little bit first – only because I really want to be sitting on a comfy couch, NOT using the left or right side of my brain! Plus, I don't want to dream about cropping photos and laying out pages.

On the other hand, Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon can come on in...