10th Anniversary

Ten years ago I began attending twice yearly scrapbook retreats with a group of women I met on a scrapbooking forum online. The first Texas retreat was held at Jeannie's lake house on Toledo Bend Reservoir and included myself and Jeannie, her sister Julie and Sherri. Steadily over the years we began adding other women from the forum: Francine, Natalia, Stephanie, even Laurie and Lori from Illinois came once or twice, as well as other ladies who came from both Texas and out of state. After a few years we added a few ladies to the mix who were never part of the original online forum, but they've become a part of the group. Although none of us use the online forum anymore, and haven't for several years, we've kept in touch via email and eventually Facebook and twice a year we still get together for our scrapbook weekends. I don't even paper scrapbook anymore, but I still attend my weekend with my girls and work on digital albums now.

We all come from different parts of the state: Houston, Fort Worth, Mesquite, Tyler, Mineola and more. We've held retreats in far East Texas, on a ranch in Clifton, Texas several times, at a scrapbook retreat place in Corsicana a couple of times as well as one somewhere that I can't even remember now, and on Lake Livingston...we've even as a group traveled to Illinois for a big forum retreat several years ago. We've attended several Rangers games together and shared meals at Mexican restaurants together. We've grown together and changed together and made tons of fun memories.

Jeannie, Sherri and myself were all in attendance this past weekend as we gathered at Stephanie's family lake house on Lake Livingston, just like 10 years ago when we started this tradition. Natalia brought yummy chocolate cupcakes to help us celebrate our anniversary. I spent the entire weekend working on three digital photo books of three of our family vacations and completed them as well. I love the time I spend with my scrapbook friends and look forward to seeing them again later in the year...because that's what we always do!