The last few weeks I’ve been working on a photo album for my youngest daughter of all the conventions she’s attended — Comicon, Sakura-con, Akicon, Kumoricon. I’m convinced these conventions are really reasons for grown up people to play dress up. However, I admit, attending them is very cool and making costumes for these conventions has been a good hobby for my youngest.

The album was a gift several years ago when she was just a couple years into her hobby. I never meant for her to put it together, because scrapbooking is my thing, though she dallied with the idea when she was 5. I think the adults in her life may have overwhelmed her by bestowing cart loads of scrapbooking supplies on her, ahem. She made a few pages in one album, colored all over the front of it to make it her own, then quit. I still have the pages she made and every once in a while I’ll look at them fondly and remember how I almost had her.

Now my own scrapbooking days are coming to an end. Though my daughters still live with us, our family outings are becoming fewer and farther in between. There are only so many pictures of my husband and I sitting in lavender fields or around campfires I want to see. Plus, there is a certain responsibility to always being behind a camera. I tended to miss the actual moments in order to capture the perfect pictures for the photo album. However, I have several special projects I need to finish. The convention album was one and after 25 years it’s time to finish my wedding album.

Though my daughter’s album was my project, I needed her assistance because it’s ultimately hers. She needed to gather all her and her friends’ pictures and choose which ones to include. After I got the 410 pictures back from the printer (gah), I had her sort them for me. It was an easy album because I used the program guide covers to introduce each convention, then I just added a different paper to make the events cohesive.

I didn’t know what was going on at the conventions otherwise, so in hindsight maybe I wasn’t the one who should have put it together. But I ended up learning something. You never really know a person until you put together an album they’ve chosen the pictures for. There were some photos I wouldn’t have included because they were dark or didn’t make sense to me, but I put them in anyway. There must have been a reason she wanted them.

Yet there was one picture I had our friend take of me in Fred Meyer with her dressed up as Loki explaining the ins and outs of insoles. I thought it was funny, but it was missing. I could have sworn I saw it when I was preparing them to print. I asked her if she intended to leave it out, and she hesitated, “Yes, why? Because it embarrassed me.”

Really? She wore the whole costume, wig, armor and all, and I embarrassed her? OK, I made her put the horns on for the photo, but what good is her hobby for me if I can’t have a little fun once in awhile? I sighed, “OK, it’s your album.”

Later I found the photo with the wrong convention. She must have hesitated because she couldn’t remember what she had decided. You can bet I stopped everything and figured out how to include its rightful place. Now the album is finished and we’re all happy. What’s the point in having kids if you can’t embarrass them every once in awhile?

Gretchen Leigh is a stay-at-home mom who lives in Covington. You can read more of her writing on her website livingwithgleigh.com, follow her on Facebook at “Living with Gleigh by Gretchen Leigh”or on Twitter @livewithgleigh. Her column is also available at maplevalleyreporter.com under the Life section.