Hey, that's weird! It's been almost a year since I've posted anything!

Ha!!  {{of course, those first three words are spoken with utmost sarcasm!  the same tone in which my husband says, "That's weird!" every time I tell him I lost my phone.  again.}}

Last night I decided that I have something new to add to my bucket list, but then I realized that I don't have one...    And then I remembered that one time I entered a giveaway by posting a {spur of the moment} bucket-list on my {latent} blog. 

So I came here to add  #16.  See the Northern Lights~*
{{yes!!!!  I must see them!!!}}

There, added.

But then, I moseyed on over to some of my old favorite blogs... Wasted some time while sipping coffee (divine), read some sweet stories & thought-provoking posts, felt distances shorten briefly as I enjoyed photos of friends' memory-making... and then there was the heart-tugging and the longing to pause time as I scrolled over the pictures of all of our children growing too fast.  It reminded me of why I love this little space so much! 

I've always been a memory-capturer, journaler, scrapbooker-- in fact, I was just recently reminiscing about my first scrapbook.  My favorite page is the one with a little hair carefully encapsulated between plastic and labeled with an arrow & 8-year-old script: "bobcat hair". 

I specifically remember walking up to the front of the amphitheater at the Wild Animal Park after the Wild Cat show, and I remember the thrill when I found the long, wiry 'bobcat hair' stuck to the log that the feline perched on just moments earlier.  I protected that specimen for the rest of our entire excursion, and was so excited to put it in my scrapbook! 

((The runner-up is few pages later, where there is a bird seed with a few dried sprouts bursting from it.  Again, carefully labeled: "this was growing in the bird dish".))   I laugh out loud every time I happen to pull out that old album during family visits.

But I don't do much memory capturing, journaling or scrapbooking anymore, even though it's part of what makes me me.  I've always needed to create.  My other titles have kept me busy: full-time Momma to 3 active boys, part-time RN, full-time homemaker, and everything that goes along with that (owie-kisser, tantrum-calmer, but also tantrum-thrower sometimes (ha!), family taxi, tutor, cook, and a million others) ... I just don't journal or scrapbook anymore.  ever.  (And, honestly, I don't even charge my cameras anymore since we have phones with camera/video... I have really missed those crisp images, the zoom, and full-length videos!)

SO...  There is a chance that I will stop letting facebook fulfill my journaling tendencies, and I will reach for my 'real' camera more often than my phone to capture some of these moments.  I'm ready to indulge in some memory-capturing & creating!  There you go, #17 on my bucket list!  Maybe it will be through the blog, or actual scrapbooking, or Shutterfly.  Maybe (hopefully) I will dance again or pick up some yarn & try my hand at that again...  I'm ready to bring that little part of me back to life again!

ETA (edited to add):  I realized that, for me, facebook has been a more accurate "journal" of our last few years... but it can't be made into a book the way a blog can be converted into a hardbound book ("Blurb Book").   ... And that has been a goal of mine for a while now...  So because of all of the *huge* blog-gaps & un-scrapbooked time, I decided to sprinkle the blog with some of my old facebook updates & photos throughout the years.  It may be confusing to read, since all my blog posts seem to be about how I never write on the blog (!) and now it will be full of posts!  But at least I can have (with some regularity) little snapshots of the past few years in my book.  (They are dated & filed chronologically, so the label will be the give-away.  Any of the posts labeled "Facebook Post" is something that actually was copy/pasted.)