2010 is off to a good start.  I finished my sister’s Christmas present on New Year’s eve and gave it to her on New Year’s Day.  I started the new year with a 3.5 mile run and ran again this morning.  I’m back to doing Project 365 and am hoping to complete it this year.  I’m looking forward to documenting some major milestones this year.  I am on the road to keeping things simple — starting with my home.  I’ve spent the last couple days cleaning out volumes of school documents (it is so liberating!) and condensing my scrapbook materials that once took up the entire bedroom closet down to three shelves.

I just finished re-reading Stacy Julian’s Photo Freedom and am inspired to reorganize my photo collection and create more meaningful layouts.  I’m also on a mission to pull out all of my scrapbook pages and reorganize them by theme.  Based on Stacy’s book, I’ve decided to categorize my scrapbook in the following themes: Me, Travel (by year since I’ve been doing a lot of traveling in the last few years), Family, and A & J.  I have several seperate albums for school stuff, including two NES books.  I will continue making pages for the NES book but I’m DONE documenting everyday school stuff.

I’m currently at Starbucks having a cup of coffee and planning for the new semester.  While I’m here buried in books and binders, everyone around me is enjoying conversations with friends or a lazy Sunday morning with the paper.  I am envious.  Just plain envious.

Before I sign off, I want to leave you with some fun pages from my sister’s book.

My sister received the ATHENA Young Professional Award for her work in renovating downton Stockton.  At 23, she’s the Director of Economic Development AND of Human Resources!  Yeah, a big title for a little person.  Damn.  This makes my acheievements at 33 seem rather minute.

She gave me a CD of photos on Christmas day and I was thrilled to get this done for her in time for the new year.

This girl knows so many people.  I can’t shop with her in Stockton without running into people she knows.

I left her plenty of room to journal.  I hope she takes the time to write — and not be afraid to mess up the page with her own handwriting.

I don’t know where she got those legs!  None of us in the family have legs like her.  My baby sister is so beautiful and smart.  So proud of you, sis.

Alright, back to work!  I wanna be done by noon today.  Is that possible?  Is the work of a teacher ever done?