We were not the first to get on the digital camera bandwagon.  With a nice Canon 35mm camera we captured our family memories quite adequately until 2003 (the year our youngest was born).  Since that time I have amassed literally thousands of pictures of my family and have them well organized using Picasa on my desktop (and remote backup). 

But what about the boxes of pre-2003 photos I have?  Of the most important to me are the pictures of my first two children as infants.  I love having creating photo books, gifts, etc from my digital images and want the same flexibility (and piece of mind) of having them digitally archived.  I have been struggling with how best to go about it.  My options are to scan the photos and/or negatives myself or pay a service to do it for me.  Well, scanning myself would be way too time consuming and not produce great quality since I don't have a professional scanner.  In terms of services, most are rather expensive, especially if getting prints scanned.  But I found a partial solution.  Costco's photo department will scan negatives (not prints) and put them on CD for $2.99/per roll (approximately 40 images).  I tried it out with a sampling for about 300 negatives and I was pretty pleased.  Granted I don't have the negatives of  all my pre-2003 prints, but I have quite a few and I am taking them in today.  I figure this will give me a good start on bringing those photos into the modern age.