This post is sponsored by the KODAK Digitizing Box. 

A few weeks ago, our friends texted in a panic: Did we have a ShopVac? They thought they remembered seeing a ShopVac. Please say you have a ShopVac.

We do indeed own a ShopVac, as any parent of any toddler who WILL eventually stop up a drain and flood your house should. 

Our friends didn't have a toddler, but they did have a leak in their basement. And a whollllllllle lot of water. 

Despite house + leaks + water being one of his all-time greatest fears, Jason heroically rushed to their house, ShopVac in hand, to help bail out and rescue what they could.

He came home and promptly surveyed our basement, which was fine, but the whole experience made him realize we had our storage room arranged 100% upside down. 

Top shelf items? Old suitcases, a beer homebrew kit, replacement air filters and some plastic bins with contents unknown. (Legos, probably.)

On the very bottom, in prime Water Damage Position? Oh, just ALL OUR OLD  PHOTOS AND HOME MOVIES. Our wedding album, Noah's baby book, ultrasound print-outs, and envelope after envelope of crappy pre-digital photos from when we dating and newlyweds.

Not smart, Storches!

We rearranged the shelves, of course, but clearly it was time to DO something with all that stuff. 

KODAK Digitizing Box to the rescue:

I'll be honest: I have no idea whose ultrasounds those are. DON'T CUT THE DATES OFF, PEOPLE. YOU WILL NOT REMEMBER WHICH SQUISHY BLOB IS WHICH. 
Our official engagement photo.. Taken at the finest Sears Portrait Studio at the mall. To this day I have no idea why we thought we needed an official engagement photo, but hey, my hair looks cute. 

My bridal shower. That's one of my nephews, and a bunch of my mom's friends whom I did not know. And that is also the face of a CHILD who probably had NO BUSINESS GETTING MARRIED.

But who (spoiler alert) did it anyway. 


Our honeymoon at Busch Gardens. We went there because I got free tickets from working at Sesame Place. Very romantic, especially the hotel room that flooded every time the air conditioner turned on.

No idea what these even are! Into the box they go!



I packed up several hundred photos, some slides, a few tapes from our ancient camcorder, the VHS tapes of our wedding, and just for the hell of it, a bunch of old cassette mix tapes Jason and I obsessively made for each back when we dating. 

And a few later, everything was carefully returned to me, along with the digitized and optimized-for-long-term-storage versions:

Five CDs and the cutest flash drive you've ever seen. (They also emailed me copies of everything, so I could immediately upload everything to my cloud storage.)

Maybe not fully cat-proof but clearly cat-approved.

Thanks to the KODAK Digitizing Box for both sponsoring this post and for taking such good care of preserving our preshus memories. Get 30% off your own box with THIS LINK and promo code AMALAH!