Barbara Feldman: Time Marches On

Dear Barbara, Our girls are in their twenties, and as long as we're paying they're going - along with the boyfriends! Sandy

Although my children are now grown, I did help a 5th grade mother with a multimedia presentation for 5th grade graduation. She had mothers collect pictures of children and events during the year. She carefully went through the pictures and made certain that EACH CHILD was represented.

We used PHOTOSHOW2 by Simple Star for a multimedia show of 18 minutes. This program is free for 15 days, cross platform and only $30 to purchase. It lets you organize your photos and provides mp3 music to choose from or you can use your own mp3s and it also has animated clip art and badges to enhance your show. Best of all, you can make an standalone exec file OR it builds a FLASH file for the web. No flash programming.

It's quick and easy to do that next year the kids may make one for themselves. One caution: we built this on my laptop and eighteen minutes was 125 MEGS, bigger than my jumpdrive, so I had to move it to my network and then to the computer with the cdrom burner!

When we showed it at graduation, the kids just hooted and hollered pointing out their friends and covering their faces when they appeared. We are making copies for teachers and parents who want them.

The cd will include the individual jpegs for emailing. We did use PhotoElements new RED EYE BRUSH for some of the pictures.

Don't forget to capture the memories. They grow up quickly.

Lucy MacDonald, an official M.A.,M.A.

Barbara, I have finally learned that nothing ever stays the same, so we need to just be grateful for each stage and go on. Our "kids"
are 32 and 36 this year, and we still occasionally vacation together when we can make it work. It will be different once your children are out and gone, but there are always good things to make up for the changing times.
You are helping so many other kids have a good time with learning that I know God will have a job for you. Blessings, Sara

Your pictures bring back memories. Bad ones. I came home from work one day to see that our neighborhood was ravaged earlier that day by a tornado.
I saw all the destruction as I drove down a street that led to our subdivision. I felt we were lucky even as I turned into it and saw the destruction to houses in our neighborhood.
The feeling remained as I pulled up into our driveway and saw two big trees on my neighbors house and damage to others. I felt like we escaped it.
A neigbor took me to the back of our house where I saw two trees up against it and one piercing our roof. What a mess.
Our damage was minimal compared to others in our neighborhood and surrounding area. The best thing about the ordeal was when I saw my wife and daughter walk through the door.

Don't want to join you!!!!! My son just graduated college and my daughter's a junior in college...as long as they have the same time off that you do, and you're paying...they will come!