Something to think about.

Totally off-topic....I had an interesting conversation with a friend who lives in the area of San Diego that has been plagued with fires the last few years, and I asked her about what lessons she learned from having to evacuate her home several times. I was expecting her to say something like, "Material possessions truly have no value," or something to that effect. Instead, however, she was very practical.

"Make a list," she said. "Prioritize which items are most important, and then go down from there."

I told her that as long as I had my kids, I wasn't worried about the rest of it, actually.

"Then think about what you need to make your kids' lives good," she said.

She then said that in her and her husband's case, photographs were on top of the list. I mentioned the blog, and said that these days, most photos are digital and can be saved on a hard drive, or even on a remote photo-sharing site like Flickr. She took a second to reply, and she said, "Boy, it's changed from when I had children." (We're from different generations.)

We continued talking, and it was a really great conversation to have. It put a lot of things in perspective for me, and I continue to consider things in terms of that adjustment she made in my "list": What do I need to keep to make life good for my kids??

And it got me thinking about this blog. I have scores and scores of photo albums of my childhood, evidence of the wonderful (and some not-so-wonderful) years spent growing up abroad and in the U.S. My kids will have the benefit of some photo albums - maybe - but ultimately their lives (and let's face it - more Boba's life than Fox's) have been recorded in this blog.

So I should really do something about that.

I guess that's my roundabout way of saying....this blog isn't just for me. Or even for my family. It's for the kids. So, if something should happen and there is no other record of the great memories we've built until now, they have this.

In light of that, here's a few wonderful photos of my wonderful little family.