On Documenting Life

Growing up I remember my mom's countless photo albums and my brother and I from time to time would take this old photo albums off the shelves and page through them, laughing at the way our parents looked before they had us, at photos of my brother and I in our younger years, looking at pictures of family members who had passed away. We would look at pictures and remember our favorite toys and the clothes we would wear, our parents would sit and tell us stories of the people in the pictures and the stories behind the pictures.

My parents also were the proud owner of a big ol' VHS tape recorder and they proudly taped our concerts, our programs, and a little bit of everything in between. We loved watching these movies as kids and every once in a while they still get pulled out (however, now I am thinking we should get them converted to DVD as no one has a VHS player any more). 

I have always enjoyed journaling and have a box filled with old journals and talk about a trip down memory lane when I go back and read of trips and junior high, of sporting events and decisions about college. I love having these pieces of history. I continue to this day to journal a bit (not NEARLY as often as I would like, but from time to time my journal gets pulled out and I write). I also have this line a day 50 year journal that I bought a couple years ago - I LOVE it and the freedom to write two sentences a day. Now that I have written in it EVERY DAY (which actually surprises me) for a couple years it is fun to look back at what was happening on that day a couple years ago. It really is a treat. 

I take more pictures than I care to admit, and they all go on shutterfly. Every year I make a 12 by 12 photo book for our year. Throughout the year I will sometimes create a smaller 8 by 11 photo book for a special trip or event that just has WAY more pictures than I can allot for our yearly book. I make most of my pages on shutterfly, however, if you have an iPhone, I HIGHLY recommend that you get the Project Life App by Becky Higgins. I bought it when it was on sale for $0.99 however, after having it and using it some I would DEFINITELY buy it full price, it is worth every penny.

The Project Life app allows you to take photos from your phone and create BEAUTIFUL scrapbook pages that I can upload to shutterfly and just drop into my books. PAGES done effortlessly. 

I also love shutterfly because I never have to print pictures unless I want to put them in frames and the albums are nice and thin so they don't take up copious amounts of space on my shelves. They also give me a small piece of mind because God forbid a fire or something ever takes our house I would not worry about losing these albums because they are saved online and I can just reprint the books (while that would be expensive it would be worth every penny to me).

Now that we have Lucy of course it raises all sorts of questions as to how I want to document her. This is new territory for me and I am certain I have a lot to learn about documenting the life of a kid. I want to strike a balance between crazy over the top documenting and wishing I had more saved and preserved. I want to live in the moment and not always be behind the camera as well as being able to savor the memories to watch later.  I also don't want to set the standards craaazy high so that if we ever have more kids it is ridiculous to recreate for them as well.

Shortly after Lucy was born I did buy a small digital camera that we carry with us in the diaper bag and occasionally break out and make short videos. Marc and I also have iPhones that we make videos on from time to time. Currently I am compiling two movies on iMovie (I love Mac) one of what I am calling our mobile movies (which includes videos that our daycare provider has sent us) and one of the movies off the video camera. Our iPhone videos do get uploaded to youtube so grandparents and those not near us can see them. 

For Lucy, I am hoping (fingers crossed and lots of wishful thinking) to create one 12 by 12 photo book for each year of her life in addition to our family album. I have also created a book for her NICU days and her Baptism (which I hope to page through with her and be able to tell her about what happened that day and show her who was there and.....). I also have a journal for her that I started writing in while I was pregnant with her. I hope to record the funny thing she says, as well as some stories about her, and just my hopes and prayers for her. I am not certain when I will give it to her, but someday she can have it.

Who do I actually think will want to see my photobooks, read my journals, watch the videos, mostly it is for myself. I sat down the other day and flipped through some old photobooks and read through some old journals. It is crazy to see where I have been what has happened and where I am now. God is indeed good.

How do you preserve your memories?

How do you preserve your videos?

What do you do with your pictures?

That day our internet was limited....

We moved into this GORGEOUS house mid-December. We love it, and so far we love everything about it. It was the house I wanted to hate when we were touring houses, it was a whole 15 minutes from work, as opposed to the less than 5 I lived before. It is out in the country. It runs on propane. It only has two bedrooms, with a beautiful unfinished basement that will hopefully not be too hard to finish off with the potential of two more bedrooms, another bathroom, a big multipurpose room, a laundry room, a storage room. It is a split level, four steps up to the main floor and nine steps down to the basement. It doesn't have a fence.  It isn't in my top choice of elementary schools. Ahhhh, we wanted to hate this house. I told Marc as we were driving out to the house that this had better be good or else there is no way.....

We walked into the house, it is totally open on the inside, the living room flows into the dining space, which flows into the kitchen. It backs up to the Crow Wing State Park (which we love and adore). It is a quiet neighborhood. It had two bathrooms, TWO bathrooms, this is a big deal when we have all of our family over. It has a three stall ATTACHED garage. It was under our budget. It had beautiful details. Besides the guest room nothing absolutely HAD to be painted. (Mom has since painted the 2nd bathroom because I didn't like the color before, thanks mom, it was livable but now this is wonderful). The guest room is next on the list to be painted. The yard is huge. We love this house, we have adjusted and really don't mind the 15 minute drive. Propane isn't a big deal to us. We continue to grow into the house and figure out where stuff goes. But one thing that we have found we actually don't mind is the fact that because we are so far out in the country we don't have unlimited internet access, we had to go with a dish internet provider which only allows us so much internet each month.

Living/Dining/Kitchen before anything was moved in

We actually read more books, we talk to each other more, we don't have Netflix streaming endlessly, we don't sit mindlessly on facebook for hours. We have plenty of data each month to do what we want to do, we just don't stream things without end. We communicate more. We enjoy the silence more. We get lost in more books and magazines. We watch movies we already owned. We check out movies from what feels like a nearly endless supply at our library. We have disconnected some, and we love it. We aren't as tied to our ipads, iphones, laptops, and tv. We were just discussing last night what a welcomed change this has become in our lives. Yes, we still use the internet probably more than we care to admit but it has been seriously lessened and we love it. I still make photobooks on shutterfly, instragram, facebook, read blogs, write blogs, and my husband frequently looks up triathlon training plans and I look at half marathon plans but we have taken a step back from the technology that had gotten a grasp on our lives. I don't think we even had a clue how much we were absorbed in it until our data was minimized and while there are moments we miss it, the reality is we are actually enjoying the lack of data.

How much do you use the internet in any given day?
Do you enjoy the chance to step back from technology?
What are your opinions on technology?

Letter

Dear Swimming Lessons Parent,
   Thank you for trusting me to teach your child to swim, he is a great kid for sure and I am enjoying my time with him. I know he is your oldest child and you haven't had kids in swimming lessons before, you are a great mom for putting him in swimming lessons. I truly believe all kids should learn to swim as it is a life saving skill. I know he one of your most priceless treasures and you are allowing me to take him into what has the potential of being a dangerous situation, but trust me, I've done this before, with the same honor you give me hundreds (after 13 years of teaching swimming lessons I may even be to the thousands by now) of other parents have trusted me with their most precious gift. I know you are nervous and so is your son, he feeds off of your nerves. I know he is very important to you, I recognize that, I also know that he is a beginning swimmer so I keep my eyes on him all of the time.
    Please remember that you did enroll him in swimming lessons, so his swimming skills can advance, please don't hold him back, it isn't help for you to need to wipe his eyes every time I challenge him to blow bubbles in the water, or check if he needs to use the bathroom every other minute, he's old enough to tell you when he needs to go (and let's be honest, he wouldn't be the first or the last kid to pee in the pool). Yes, I know he won't be Michael Phelps when we are done with this eight week session however after three weeks I am already seeing his skills advance, trust me, pushing him a little to do things like: get his face wet, put his head underwater, blow bubbles, and float (with my assistance) won't ruin him for the rest of his life. Watch the way he smiles when he accomplishes a task, when he successfully puts his head all the way underwater he comes up in excitement with a smile going from ear to ear and says "did it, I did it, watch me again!" He is having fun, I am not pushing him too hard, he isn't crying, he'll be just fine if he gets water in his eyes and mouth, and while I think it's gross when kids pee in the pool, if he does it'll be just fine.
   Please sit back and move away from the edge of the pool during swimming lessons, enjoy the benches that are there for you to sit on. Remember the conversations that we have had, remember we have talked about this several times already. Please snuggle your baby for a few moments knowing that your oldest won't be interrupting you. Or if you don't want to take the baby out of the car seat, enjoy a good book, relax, play in your iPhone, space out, dream, pray, hope, and while you enjoy a half hour without a four year old needing your undivided attention, trust me. If I need anything or he needs anything you are there, and I am thankful that you care enough to cheer on your kid, to enroll him in swimming lessons, to come and watch him, but please let me do my job.
Peace-
  your son's swimming lessons instructor