Recording our family memories is important. We take photographs, we create scrapbook pages, we journal to tell our stories. We want to record our children’s history for them. We want our grandchildren to be able to see what their parents looked like as children, to know what they were like when they were young. 

But what about you? Are you telling your children and grandchildren YOUR story?

Several months ago I sent in all of my parent’s family videos. This week they were returned to me in DVD format. I have 9 hours to watch, and have only been through 45 minutes so far. Even so, one thing I have noticed is that looking at these images has made me recall some memories instantly. Things I had forgotten. 

When I saw this image, “Skippy!” immediately popped out of my mouth. I didn’t even remember we had a dog when I was 4, much less his name. But this image reached back into my brain and connected with a memory.

I had to grab a quick shot of the movie, so the image is blurry. I didn’t cut off my sister’s head either. That’s sort of how some of the movies were originally shot. My parents had just gotten the movie camera and were still learning how to use it at this time, apparently. LOL!

But my point is this… how many memories do you have that are just not part of your everyday thoughts?  Can you take the time to look at some photos or movies or yourself when you were young and find some gems that just beg to be shared?  I don’t know that I would call the ownership of a little dog, necessarily, a “gem” – but it showed me that within these 9 hours of videos, I might have some surprises in store.

If looking at these videos brings back memories for me, I can’t help but believe that when our children and grandchildren look at our scrapbook pages, the same thing could happen to them. Isn’t that awesome?