My wife, the craftiest gal I know.

My wife Miyoung, I must say, is a real trooper. I have never seen a person so dedicated to her job. She feels a personal attachment to our students unlike anything I've ever known. With that in mind, she has undertaken an extremely elaborate arts and crafts project, making personal photo albums for each of our students. The design is based on an accordion-style scrap book that we saw in some overpriced yuppy junk store, but Miyoung went above and beyond the call of duty by making the whole thing from scratch.

Here she is hard at work packing up the finished products. Notice the envelopes everywhere. She wound up making 36 albums.

Here's a better shot of the fancy footwork involved in the final step.

Above you see the raw ingredients that go into the album, i.e. photos, card stock, and a hair band. Below behold the finished project. This one for quiet but funny 3rd grader Cindy.

Inside is festooned with comments penned by yours truly (most of them obscure in-jokes that only the students will understand, e.g. "Cindy-rano"; this adds a personal touch, I find). My wife also included our contact information.

Put it in an envelope and write the name with a rainbow pencil. You can never go wrong with the rainbow pencil.

Tape it up with (get this) tape covered with copyrighted images of American candy wrappers. Cool.

And top it all off with marshmallow mushrooms and strawberries so fancy and delicious that I am not even allowed to taste them, not that I want to.


Isn't that just about the cutest thing you've ever seen?