Memory Lane

Age 7 (1979)

Over the last two weeks I've gone through two boxes of scrapbooks, yearbooks, photographs, and other various memorabilia collected from the last 41 years of my life. The scrapbooks my mom made back in the 70's and 80's were falling apart. The pages were disintegrating, and as we now know (but no one knew back then), these pages are not very kind to the contents stored within them. I removed what I could (most of the pages were the kind that were sticky and some of the papers couldn't  be removed) and filed everything that wasn't a photograph (or was bigger than a 4x6 inch photo) into the files in the same hanging file box that I am using to store mementoes from each of the kids. I only have a few pictures from birth to age nine. Mostly I found many pages of schoolwork (quizzes, tests, report cards, etc.), brochures from places we visited on family vacations, and oodles of certificates and ribbons - primarily from the school I attended from 4th-8th grade. Most of the papers from school used purple ink from the now obsolete "ditto machine"  (mimeograph). My kids definitely will not have the massive collection of certificates and ribbons that I do, if we stick with our plan to home school them. They have already gotten some from things like AWANA.

Paul and I went on a date to Longwood Gardens.

Nadia and Ian enjoyed seeing my childhood pictures, and Nadia read two of my small Kindergarten readers. I also found a few audio tapes - some were ones I had taken from my Grandmother's house after she died. Nadia really enjoyed hearing my sisters and I talking, singing, playing the piano, etc. from a tape made in 1980. I was rather thorough with my scrapbooking until 2003. There is a tiny bit from 2004, and then I totally took a hiatus until 2008 when Nadia was born. I did a total of eight scrapbooks and photo albums (four for each of them) for the first two years of Nadia and Ian's lives, but during that time I switched to photo books, and sometime in 2011 I totally quit making scrapbooks or photo albums, which means I don't have any for Oliver. I have totally switched to photo books. If I could go back in time, I would have just done photo books whenever they started making those (and I had a digital camera). Those take up FAR less space for one thing.

At a cousin's wedding in 2003 (shortly before Wendy got married)

As I see the transition from scrapbooks and photo albums to photo books, it makes me wonder what will be the next "new" thing that will make photo books out dated. I imagine it will probably be something that's totally digital. I have a hard time imagine myself ever transitioning from photo books to something totally digital, but time will tell. The scrapbooks that weren't falling apart (1992-2003) I left in tact even though they are so bulky. The photos from the scrapbooks I dismantled and the ones that were just in envelopes (ex. China vacation 2006) because I had never gotten around to putting them in a scrapbook or envelope are now in a photo organizer. I did take several of my favorite photos (as far back as from the 50's) and put them in frames around the house. They'll be seen and enjoyed a lot more that way than if they stay in the scrapbook, photo organizer, or hanging file. I scanned a few of the ones that I eventually want to get in frames around the house to share in this post.

Dinner at the Victorian Manor to celebrate our engagement (2000)

One other random thought I had while going through the photos is that I wish I had a better wedding photographer. I am not sure if it's just that photography has improved so much over the past 13 years, or if it's because I didn't spend enough on the photographer, but wow they look pitiful compared to what I see wedding photographers produce these days. Probably it's a combination of both factors. I felt like I spent a lot on the photographer because it was about 25% of my whole wedding budget (more than 4.5 times more than what I spent on my wedding dress), but probably I could have spent more and gotten better pictures. I also wish he had a digital camera, but he didn't. Thankfully we did get a few wedding pictures that I really like. My favorite was one that a guest took! Speaking of the cost of things, I saw proof of inflation when I noticed that our Disney tickets cost $95 for FOUR days at any of the parks in 1990. It costs about that much to go ONE day now!

Lately I have been trying to decide whether to continue wearing contact lenses or not. Last week I only wore glasses for most of the week, and I decided I prefer wearing contacts even though I have more trouble reading (the computer screen, magazines, etc.) with contacts. My glasses don't have photo gray lenses (like Paul's do), and I really missed not being able to wear sunglasses with my glasses on. I also didn't like how they fogged up when I opened the oven door, drained the boiling water from a pot, stepped outside when it was really cold, etc. Looking through the scrapbooks, I also realized once again how much eye glasses really "date" a picture - sometimes even more than clothing and hair styles. In addition to the fact that I find some of my past hairstyles to be repulsive now, there are many pictures I don't like because of my weight at that time. Looking at the scrapbooks definitely has heightened my motivation to lose a few more pounds this year and keep the weight off! Right now I weigh about 15 pounds more than I did when I met Paul 17 years ago, and I was very happy with my weight when I met him. The highlight of my mammogram a couple of weeks ago was when the woman who was doing it referred to me as thin. I can't remember the last time someone used that word to describe me. It put a smile on my face!