When my youngest was in first grade, I converted our walk-out into a 2 room school house. For the next 10 years I ran a preschool program from our home offering children, and my family, "the best of both worlds". I’ll talk more about my preschool, aptly named "Wee Care" at another time. But for today, I want to draw everybody’s attention to the ceiling in the school.  

Although rather hard to discern in this picture, each fall we dipped the children’s hands in paint and pressed their hand prints on the ceiling. How, you might ask. Without going into detail, think about trying to put pajamas on a ferret! Anyway, each year, each student left his or her mark on our ceiling, not only recording their growth over 3 years, but beautifully reminding me of all the little lives I had come in contact with. When I finally moved out of the house, it was very hard saying goodbye to the ceiling, especially knowing that the next owners would probably promptly paint over it.

Travel forward in time. When I moved in with Tim, one of the very first things I did was to turn the basement into a playroom. (This was accomplished when Michelle was pregnant with our first grandchild.) I had so much enjoyed my preschoolers’ hand prints that I knew it was imperative that I found a way to record my grandchildren’s. Tim and I came up with a wonderful idea… which I’ll share next time!