A strange interlude for me, though one I should have navigated months ago. I have been working on the scrapbook I started in January of last year because I am going to a retreat with the women from my internet board on Thursday--they have listened to me and prayed for us and for Thomas for years now and I want to show them a little of who he was. Thus, the incentive to get this thing done finally (or as done as possible, I suspect it will always be a work in progress). It has been very, very draining to go through all of these pictures (forget the mementos, I can only keep track of so many things). Some things I had forgotten we had and some I just found so unexpectedly painful to look at . . . I will try to do a rubbing of his dog tags though before we leave.

One thing I had totally forgotten was a picture from nursery school: the Thanksgiving play. He was dressed as an Indian (this was 20 years ago!) and across the front was written "Brave Warrior." It took my breath away for a moment.

I've had to order some prints of things that seem to be surviving only on the computer and I hope they get here by Wednesday so I can add them in. To my great surprise, a memory card from the digital camera I had in 2004 had not been erased so when I took it out, there were 80 pictures on there, among them those I took at my sister's in Washington just before Thomas deployed. I actually had those pictures stored in my computer, but they had been transferred a couple of times and were showing signs of degrading a bit so I am very glad to have more pristine copies.