Packing up Mary's Memories...

We've been packing up memories! On Tuesday, I helped Mary box up a bunch of her belongings, as well as put some aside to give away, sell, or even throw away. One of the most poignant boxes is one where she has stashed some of her childhood keepsakes. She just called and said she's on her way home so we can work on it some more. I thought I'd snap pictures of some of this stuff before it leaves my house. Would you like to come along for the ride down Memory Lane?

Jesse Bear (her friend from birth) has been reclaimed from Ben and Melody, and dressed in the outfit Mary wore home from the hospital when she was born....

I also found the quilt that I designed for Mary when she was a baby. It is made from six pastel "rainbow" colors. I cut up index cards into triangle pieces, colored them, and then played around with them until I got them in the arrangement I wanted. Each piece is adjacent to the two colors it is next to on a color wheel (i.e. blue is between green and purple). So soft after all these years!

When Mary was a toddler, Thad and I flew to the island of St. Kitts (in the Caribbean) for a week to see his dad, who was working on an extended engineering job there. We brought back a mobile of little wooden parrots for Mary.

My mom then made a coordinating stained glass parrot for Mary. Our older girls each have a special stained glass made by Grandma.

This is Mary's first book, made from construction paper when she was five. She copied a Bible verse for each letter of the alphabet -- at least she got up to K for Kind. The page below was for Forgiving and the verse is "Love keeps no record of wrong." This project was the very start of the Alpha-Virtues curriculum that I started to write way back then. I made huge progress on it a few years ago, but laid it aside again. This season of life is just too busy to be writing more books.

In third grade, Mary created a charming book called Flying Colors for a Reading Rainbow young illustrator's contest. It was about a pegasus who didn't like the way she looked, so she tried changing her appearance in all sorts of bizarre ways -- painting herself plaid, polka dots, etc.. In the end, she went back to being herself, whereupon the prince whom she had known since kindergarten declared that he loved her just the way she was and asked her to marry him. Well, she hasn't known Ryan since kindergarten, but she's marrying him one week from today!

When she was nine, Mary had three wishes. She wanted a best friend, a Molly doll from American Girls, and a cat (or was it a dog?). She got the first two, but not the third. Katie, whom she met just after her birthday that year, is the maid of honor in her wedding. Molly, who looks so much like Mary did at age nine, is moving along to her new home. And the pet? Well, we never got a cat or a dog (and probably never will!) but we had a few gerbils and hamsters and even a dwarf bunny along the way. Let's just say we're not very good with small animals, and none of them survived long!

When Mary was 16, I asked the readers of my home school e-magazine, The Hope Chest, to send along birthday greetings and blessings. I bound them into a little book -- and she still has it! I hope she reads it again soon on the cusp of embarking on her newest adventures!

Well, that's it for our trip down Memory Lane! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!

Blessings,

Virginia