Mother's Day 2016

When my daughters were little, Mother's Day had a certain poignancy, a celebration of a mother's love and care for little beings who were too young to take complete care of themselves. Now that my babies are just about all grown up, it's also a time to look at our relationships with each other. We want to try to remain close to each other, even though we are now three individuals who are scarily alike in some ways, but amazingly different in others. We have misunderstandings, and we frustrate each other sometimes, but we don't want disagreements to drive us apart. The girls' father and I have stresses and sufferings and worry because of them, but our daughters are also their now to share in the difficulties that Mr. BTEG and I encounter. I hope I can give my daughters guidance and encouragement and support as long as I am on this earth, and I hope they remember fondly what I have given them, and are able to give to children of their own.

Need Negative Advice

Photo negative advice, that is. I know some of you are scrapbookers and do a lot with photos. Are there any cool new ways out there to store and label negatives? Since I've joined Facebook, I've been going through a lot of our older pictures, with an eye to possibly uploading some. I'm tired of having loose envelopes of negatives laying around.

Albatross

I have a dollhouse; my parents gave it, or the start of it, to me for Christmas when I was 8 years old. It's a Lundby dollhouse, if any of you are knowledgeable about, or care about dollhouses. I'd like you all's words of wisdom and advice, because I am thinking it is time to get rid of it. My daughters never played with it; they were rough on the plastic dollhouse furniture they had, never mind fragile little chairs in a much smaller scale made out of wood. They've never shown much interest in it. Maybe they've always just seen it as "Mom's." I haven't actually had the dollhouse set up for years, literally. I know the stuff will fetch good prices on eBay, and go to adults, most likely, who will cherish it. Yet, I have a thing about selling it. It feels like giving away the remnants of my childhood, if that makes any sense. It feels like I'm betraying my parents, who I believe were very proud of being able to give me such an expensive toy. Of course, I'm not currently on speaking terms with either of my parents; maybe that's an added problem. Do any of you have any insight on getting rid of childhood items, or "clutter" in general, that you feel you ought to part with, but there's that lingering tug?