A (frustrating) Labour of Love

My two sisters came over a couple of weeks back to visit and work on our parents’ anniversary memory album. We decided to use Costco and create an online photo book, have it printed, order as many copies as other family wanted, and present it to Mom and Dad at their 55th Anniversary Celebration coming up in just over a week (!). 

Knowing that it takes 5-7 business days for this to be ready, we felt that the third week of July would give us plenty of time to get the job done.  We logged into my Costco photo centre account and created a book. I wondered why my other projects weren’t showing up on this account, but didn’t really think much about it.

We spent hours collecting pictures, emailing family for photos (why is it human nature to procrastinate?!), choosing the right ones, and placing them on the correct pages. We wanted to give each family involved a fair amount of space for the photos they had donated to the project. Not an easy feat.

Did I mention this took hours? We only had a couple of days together and it had to be completed before the sisters left my home. Little Sis stayed up till 1 a.m. perfecting the album on the final evening.

Once she returned home, she badgered a few more rellies for pics and finally the job was done. She emailed me to check it out for duplicate pics, etc, and then I was to order it.

We both breathed a sigh of relief when we finally agreed this was it. No More Changes.

I logged into the account, and clicked on the drop down menu to find the correct province and city to order from our nearest Costco store.

I stared long and hard. I numbly picked up the phone and called my sister. “Houston, we have a problem” I stammered.

Only the American Costco stores were available. WHAT???!!!!!  Noooooooooooooooooo!

After all that, we had failed to notice that we had created the photo book on an American Costco site!!!

If we didn’t have a good sense of humor, we would have both been blubbering and sniffling right about then.

Our cool heads prevailed. Sis would drive down to Bellingham the next weekend and pick up the book there.

Problem is.. it seems Canadians can only take $50 worth of goods across the border if they don’t stay 24 hours. Which means, we could only order one book at a time.  And who knows, we might have to pay duty on top of the price. I do hope not.

Reordering is going to be a royal pain (will not think about that right now).

Oh, bother!!!

I do hope Mom and Dad like the book , though. (They’d BETTER!) ;)