new year tradition

after some prompting on one of the groups that i'm in, in 2004 we started a tradition to stamp our hands on new years to keep track of how much we change and who we change from year to year. this year's print has jerry's hand on it, as he's new in my life, but it doesn't have my son's gf's print b/c they are no longer together. little raven's tiny print is MUCH bigger than it was last year. we make one all together, overlapping as needed, b/c that symbolizes "family" to me. our family is not made up of individual units, but rather a combination of members. we overlap, we support, we touch, we hold, we love -- we stick together.

then, each smaller family unit makes their own page -- jerry and i made our own and i'll put our picture w/ our hands. summer, lucas, and raven made their own and i'll put their picture w/ their hands. it's a fun way to see how we change over the years, both by adding (or removing) people from our family and by seeing the kids grow. using a permanent marker, each person writes his/her name with his/her handprint -- for future reference. the page is dated to insure that we always know which page goes w/ each year.

on this picture, the black sparkly handprint is jill, the green handprint is jerry, the pink handprint is raven, the bronze handprint is lucas, the gold handprint is summer, and the red handprint is scott. after we stamp our handprint, we then emboss it w/ the color of our choice. each person has to be a little different. this picture is on 11 x 14 65# sketchpad paper.