Capturing Memories.....

Last week I was thrilled to uncover Laughter's baby book in an odd bin of scrap booking supplies which had never been unpacked from the move to Colorado.  My relief was short lived when I realized that being hidden in that bin meant there was nothing (as in totally clean blank pages) recorded about his first few years of life. 

Sigh....I had been doing so well on the whole baby book thing.  Ten kids had them beautifully filled out and safely stored in archival photo boxes along with personal mementos of their early years.  Stacked and labeled in my office I was feeling pretty smug about my ability to keep those crazy records the developmental peds always ask for....when did they roll over...first word.... sat alone?

But no more.  Shoot...honestly I don't even know where Laughter's box is...or if he ever had one on the chaos of all the moving.  And my office is now a boys bedroom with the baby boxes relegated to the basement.

Which makes me shake my head a little and grin at how far I have come from the hyper-organized and slightly deranged person that even dreamed up such a system for cataloguing a child's first years and kept it going for 10 kids. :)

I am going to try and salvage this for the baby - one of my goals for March is to dredge up another mystery file - one where I recorded the moving details which spanned his first 14 months on the family wall calender - and glean what pieces of information I can off of that.  I also have facebook, this blog and photo files to help me recreate the milestones that slipped through my busy fingers.  It may be important in the future and certainly wont get any easier if I don't do it now - which makes it a priority and brings me to the 'new plan. '   Because life has been beyond busy for the past few years I needed a smoother record keeping system (that didn't include the words Creative Memories) for capturing the fun and challenge that is our daily life.  And honestly I needed something that didn't involve paper cutters, ink pens, special paper and the need to spread out on a table.

Enter electronic publishing........a medium I think my father would have loved.  Because I share his nature, record keeping this way appeals to me and for the past few January's (while I am anxiously waiting for the tax forms to be released by the IRS) I have printed and bound our facebook and blog entries and created photo books telling the family story through the year.  It's part of my ritual for winding the last year down and something all of our kids look forward to finding in the mail.  I often laugh at the results - they range from very artistic and carefully planned to slapped together and obviously by the skin of my teeth.  Regardless - each year has a history this way and I am constantly amazed to look back and see God's work in our lives and how far we have come.

Which is super important to me.
To see that this isn't an endless treadmill or a random series of events.
To know that it is God's good plan which I want to remember
The good
The bad
and the downright bizarre.......

How about you?  Do you find it important for your family to have a record of where your paths have taken you and how the hand of God has been revealed? 
Do you have other good ideas for me as the record keeper and recorder of our life?