Scrapbooking | April 2020 By The Numbers

This year, as I process each month's photos, I'm creating a digital layout featuring six photos and journaling "by the numbers." I'm using a digital template and various papers from my stash. My plan is to include a photo of me and Robbie and a photo of my mantel display as the top line of photos each month.

Here's how the numbers add up for April.

* 4 custom made-with-love face masks received from Brenda.

* 1 Risen Savior celebrated on Easter.

* 30 more days of Nationwide Social Distancing.

* 22 days Robbie worked from home.

* 3,000-piece puzzle completed.

* 29 Doubletree chocolate chip cookies baked by Robbie.

* 1 peach cobbler cake baked by Melissa.

* 17 1st round NFL draft picks watched during live video conferencing draft.

* 13 movies watched: 5th Wave, God Bless the Broken Road, The Day After, Kit Kittredge, Family Flight, The Angry Red Planet, The Passion of the Christ, The Lady in the Van, 1917, Ice Station Zebra, Draft Day, The Green Berets, and Finding Forrester.

* 26 layouts completed, 5 art journal pages created, 2 Bible pages illustrated, 1 card made, 2 mini-albums completed start to finish, 21 blog posts published.

On Good Friday, we watched The Passion of the Christ movie on Amazon Prime. We first saw this movie, which depicts the twelve hours of Christ's life before his death on the cross, when it was released in theaters in 2004. It's a powerful movie, but not for the faint of heart because Jesus suffered terribly throughout that day as He prepared to give His life to wash away our sins.

We watched Draft Day on the day of the first round of the NFL draft, which was broadcast live via video conferencing this year as everyone was under social distancing guidelines. The movie is an excellent introduction to how the draft works as it follows the fictional general manager of the Cleveland Browns (played by Kevin Costner) leading up to the first pick on draft day. The characters are great, the plot moves along quickly, and the ending is very nice!

I found The Lady in the Van on Amazon Prime after seeing a snippet about this movie in a book I was reading. I was intrigued, and when I looked it up and discovered that Dame Maggie Smith plays the  main character, a vagrant women living in a van in a writer's driveway in London, I knew we had to watch it. It was a good movie, based on a true story. It was also FUN to see several other Harry Potter actors in the show!

We watched God Bless the Broken Road on Netflix after searching for Christian movies. It turned out to be a good show about a lady whose husband had been killed while serving in the military. Her struggles to cope with the loss, raise her daughter alone, and deal with financial difficulties are intertwined with the story of a race car driver who arrives in town to get coaching after a series of loses.

The sci-fi movies we watched in April varied quite a bit. The 5th Wave was released in 2016 and is a good adaptation of the book of the same name. We both enjoyed the book and the movie! The Day After released in 1983 and depicts the nuclear bombing of America by the Soviets. The movie is set in Lawrence, Kansas, and follows several individuals through the day of the bombing and the aftermath. Honestly, this made for TV movie is a downer and has a terrible ending. Ice Station Zebra  (more suspense than sci-fi) also involved the Russians. This movie follows "an American nuclear submarine captain in a deadly race against the Soviets to find a downed satellite beneath the polar ice cap." The plot moves along very slowly (possibly frozen under the ice cap), but it has a satisfying ending. The Angry Red Planet is an older movie, released in 1959, following the crew of a rocket that lands on Mars. They are attacked by strange creatures and then receive a warning as they return to Earth. This low-budget film features "CineMagic" which gave the scenes on Mars a cartoonish look.

We are both fans of war movies, so we ordered a copy of the movie 1917 that we missed when it released last year. This excellent World War I movie follows two young British soldiers as they race across enemy territory to deliver a  message that will stop a doomed attack. The cinematography of this movie was amazing -  Robbie noticed it immediately, many of the scenes look like one very long continuous shot. We learned this was actually the case when we watched some of the extras that came with the bluray we purchased. John Wayne actually produced and starred in the other war movie we watched, The Green Berets, which depicts rugged battle action during the Vietnam War. This film came out in 1968, in the midst of the war, as an attempt to shine a more positive perspective on the war effort.

We re-watched a couple of favorites as well: Kit Kittredge is the story of American Girl character Kit Kittredge, who lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, during the Great Depression. It is a beautiful, family-friendly, feel-good movie that I highly recommend for everyone. Finding Forrester is set in the Bronx in modern times and follows Jamal Wallace, a sixteen-year-old who gets a scholarship to a Manhattan prep school because of his test scores and ability to play basketball. "He soon befriends the reclusive writer, William Forrester. The friendship leads William to overcome his reclusiveness and Jamal to overcome his racial prejudices and pursue his true dream - writing." This is another one I highly recommend.

And, finally, Family Flight was a new-to-me movie; however, Robbie remembers watching it when it premiered on ABC in 1972 (when he was almost 8-years-old). It's an enjoyable movie about a bitterly divided family who has to work together when their holiday plane crash-lands in the California wilderness. 

As you can see, it was a very creative month for me with lots of evenings watching movies with my sweetheart! How did the number add up for you in April?