PTO Friends,

There have been several members posting recently who will be self-surrendering soon and leaving young children at home. I'd like to share how we've attempted to keep our son in the loop with his niece and nephews (ages 6, 4, 1 and 3 months) while he's away.

We get together every Sunday for a noon meal and take lots of digital pictures. I upload them onto the pc on Sunday evening and drag them into my letters all week. I usually send two day (I write every day) so he gets pictures in every letter.

We have an inexpensive color printer but the pictures come out pretty good. Of course they aren't the quality that they'd be if we had them developed but he gets them much sooner this way. Some of them we wouldn't want to develop anyway as we take some pretty goofy ones sometimes! Most are candid--just the every day stuff which of course is what he misses most. We develop the really good ones and send him those for his photo album.

The only down side is that it uses quite a bit of toner from the color cartridge, but oh well, I think it's worth it.

Just an idea that I thought I'd share...
Susan

That is a tremendous idea.

Another way to keep the children aware of who you are talking about is if you are lucky enough for self surrender is take lot of pictures of them with their aunt uncle mom dad and make them a photo album of their own. Once a week or so sit down and say look there is Uncle Mike holding you and your brother, and try to let them speak to them every few months. For really small children that helps them put a face with the name and the memories active. If no self surrender time try to find some pictures of the loved one and keep them knowing who that is in the picture and that they love them a lot.