Photo Finish!

 I did it!

For months, I've been sending small batches of non-digital film - first APS cartridges and, eventually, latent prints - to DigMyPics on a quest to digitize photos we took prior to the advent of digital cameras. I also had my local camera specialty store digitize a slew of negatives, and then scoured my photog-husband's computer, external hard drive, and camera for digital images he'd taken but had not shared with me.

Once I had all those new digital images in hand, I began a quest to merge them with my collection of digital photos, choosing to organize them chronologically and by significant event and then re-naming each image in catalogue-format. The process took weeks and weeks of time and oodles of patience - as much as I love looking at pictures of my girls, I definitely grew tired of it at times - but I pressed on because I really wanted the final product and, as one of my daughters aptly pointed out, I'm just that stubborn.

Once I had all the photos in place, I loaded them onto several different flash drives. The three on the left in the photo above are smaller drives - 32G each - that I'd originally purchased some time ago as a backup for the unorganized photos stored on my computer; each can hold roughly one-third of the new catalogue. Each drive on the right is 128Gs, each capable of storing every photo - about 17,500 images so far - with plenty of room to spare for more. One is an extra backup for my husband and me - I'm keeping the smaller drives in one place and the larger in another - and the other two are meant for our daughters, so they can each have a readily-accessible record of all their childhood photos. And I still have a master copy on my computer as well. I can easily add new monthly photos going forward.

Next up will be continuing with the physical scrapbooks I've been creating since the girls were babies. I'm about three years "behind" because of the time I've needed to develop The Homeschool Resource Roadmap. But I'm stubborn about them too - years ago, I committed to making one book for each of the girls for every year of their childhoods and I intend to hold myself to it - so I'm sure I'll find time to catch up. In fact, knowing I've got the digital record fully in order motivates me to do that all the more.