Capturing Memories

Originally posted 1/19/14

As I was going through some pictures for a project that my husband are doing, I came across pictures spanning about 20 years.  You know those pictures...of your kids when they were little; of yourself when you were smaller; of vacations, and games, and holidays, and dogs, and friends and family and babies born over the years.  It's opened up my eyes to everything that we have seen over the length of our marriage and how important it is to capture those memories.

One son is a sophomore in college pursuing Studio Art and Education degrees, while playing on a college football team and being involved in a great fraternity. The other, a sophomore in high school, secretary for his class, who is getting ready for this years track and baseball seasons, which will lead into next years football season and ACT tests and college visits.  Both boys grumble when I try to take pictures of them.  I find that the only time they truly cooperate is when they aren't looking, or are on the field, or dressed in snowmobile gear where I can't get their true expressions.  The number of pictures I have where one of them is flipping me the bird to be funny is quite comical. It's sort of our thing.

I found a picture from the first day of kindergarten for our youngest and realized that I definitely need to get back on the horse and commit to going back to WW and truly spend some time exercising. I'll admit it...I looked damn good.  I have all the support in the world; someone who will try with me and never criticize when I go up, and not down, in my weight loss.  That being said...what happened?  Life happened.  Too many quick meals on the fly on the way to baseball and football games.  Pictures make me remember what I was like before and how I'd like to be again.

We have been lucky enough to take several vacations every year.  We've been to Atlanta with the kids; and Orlando.  And my husband and I have been to Las Vegas multiple times, and Tucson, and Bristol.  More often than not, though, we travel north and go to our home away from home.  Thankfully, we all love it.  Snowmobiling in winter, relaxing in summer, and the boys heading there to hunt in fall.  Someday we will call that home and vacation will mean coming into the city.

I've taken hundreds, if not thousands, of pictures of various sporting activities over the years.  Little League games, high school games, youth and high school football games, and now college games.  I love it.  I love everything about it.  My pictures aren't perfect, but they create memories not only for my husband and I, but our boys, their friends and their parents and our friends.  There is something satisfying when you see your son helping another boy on the field to get in the right location before a play; or capturing your kid jumping on the line trying to deflect an extra point; or getting the shot of the perfect throw from 3rd to first, or throwing someone out at 2nd from home plate.

Over the length of our marriage, we have been blessed with six dogs calling us family.  CJ, Barney, Goose, Camo, Stosh and Bella.  CJ was a wedding gift from me to my husband and Barney followed the year after.  They each passed at 13 years old, a year apart.  Camo was the victim of cluster seizures and we needed to put him to peace.  Goose passed away, on  his own, after suffering a broken heart when Camo passed.  Stosh and Bella are currently laying our floor snuggling each other.  Thankfully, we have pictures and videos of all of our puppies.

We have thousands and thousands of pictures saved on computer hard drives, external drives and flash drives; we also have half as many hard copies of pictures from early in our marriage.  I love sitting down and running through memory lane.  Some day I'll gather the boys and my husband together and we'll sit down and go through each of the boxes and try to make some sense of the jumbled mess of those memories.  We'll get lost going down memory lane; come to; and start creating the next 20 years of memories.