Sunday, January 13, 2013

How do you organize your family's memories?

Ever since I had James I have become obsessed almost with keeping track of the things that we do as a family. When I was a kid I don't remember much of the stuff that we did and I know times were different back then in the fact that photos weren't taken nearly as much as they are now. I know we have family photos of me when I was a kid but it was never something that I really remember my mom doing.

I want to be the mom that my kids dread because I always have the camera in their faces...but I also always want them to appreciate that years down the road when they have thousands of photos of their childhoods to look back and see all the things we did.

As well as creating a yearly family calendar on Shutterfly (link to 2012 is below, not sure if it will work), I also have a family calendar in a binder (just printed weekly calendar pages) that I write down everything that we do, and all of those kid milestones that I know I don't want to forget. This includes all the crazy stuff that James has been saying these days!

The calendar has changed over the past two years but I absolutely love the idea of it. Each month now has 15 of my favorite photos of things that we did and below it is the date that the activity took place. This includes such things as play dates with friends, trips to our favorite park, Willingdon, or just playing in the backyard at Nana and Papa's.

The written family calendar is then transcribed over to the photo calendar once I get it back from Shutterfly. That way when all is said and done I have a complete calendar with photos and listings of everything we've done. Even if my kids never care about these calendars, I want to be proud that at the end of the raising kid years I will have a yearly record to show our family's memories. I'm proud of the efforts I am making to ensure these memories are kept and recorded for many generations to come to see them.

Front of the 2012 Calendar

Example page from 2012 Calendar

2011 Calendar - Photos

2011 Calendar - Written page

http://www.shutterfly.com/calendar/viewPreview.sfly?fid=5da1d53402879e321edfde4629415e0afeab3dd66ece74a3f9ac648439d98e4a



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