Moc7-30sandiegoxmasvacation

paper from Secret Ingredient Love collab by Studio Basic & Etc By Danyale
Messy Edges by Amy Wolff
heart, flower, and branch from A December to Remember by Little Butterfly Wings
vacation word strip, grass, and shell from Holiday by Mommyish
Spiral Bound Alpha by Kate Hadfield
Christmas word art from Holiday Cheer by Mommyish
Stitched Down Dates by Lynn Grieveson

my journaling (351 words)

Journaling written January 30, 2019. We don’t travel much anymore. It’s too expensive. We’ve also pretty much only gone back to visit my family in San Diego when we did travel. Our last visit was January 2018; prior to that was 2013; and before that was the last decade, I think. But we traveled several times when the kids were very little. Here are photos from Rhiannon’s second Christmas. She’s 18 months old. I think we even went back to San Diego more than once that year. One time it was just the two of us. I chose to scrap these photos because they show parts of my parents’ house, which is also the house I lived in from the time I was 18 months old until I moved out to live with Robert at the age of 23. Everything except the computers and some of the things on walls and shelves are the same as when I lived there. I stretched out on that bed to chat with my friends on that old green telephone on my dad’s bedside table. My Mom bought that green recliner when she was pregnant with my little brother. That dining table has scratches in it from all the years of my siblings and me sitting there to do homework. I learned the joy of popcorn and hot chocolate by a crackling fire in that family room and wrote emails to Robert in that computer room (which was my brother’s room until our sister moved out). That door has a penciled record of our increasing heights. My brother learned to walk on that avocado green carpet. I don’t remember this trip. I wasn’t journaling back then. But I have about 100 photos from my camera and my Mom’s. So it’s not totally forgotten. At least from the pictures I can see who we visited -- the Andersons, the Rajavels -- and that we had Christmas Day at my sister’s house. I even have photos of chasing Rhiannon around the Phoenix airport during our layover. Weird how my memory fails to conjure up any details though