Today, it has been two years since I started blogging. The old saying is true, time flies when you're having fun!
The whole 'blogging thing' has got me thinking about how we preserve memories. With the little man now at school, we're seeing folios of his best works coming together already at school, and I've been taking photos galore. I don't want to miss one detail or one moment of this time that I know is going to whiz by if I don't watch and enjoy.
I think that part of me, wanting to preserve every moment in photos, is ingrained, or genetic at least! My hubby said something interesting recently ~ he said even though the constant photographing can get tiring, the fact that my parents took tons of photos while I was growing up, is such a good thing.
Hubby wasn't as fortunate with photos. I think most of his family's photos were lost in a fire back in the 80s when his family had a general store in the bush, and their photos were kept there. I have only a handful of photos of hubby as a boy, but albums and albums of my own childhood. It's so sad he can't look back at those photos, because they do help us to remember the whats, whens, hows, whys and wheres.
So, my Dad being the happy snapper that he was and still is, has rubbed off on me. I'm even more the happy snapper, keeping a camera with me almost at all times (there's always that invention, the mobile phone camera, as a backup!). And now the little guy has caught the bug, and has his own camera to run around taking snaps, preserving his own memories.
These photos you are seeing are another way my parents keep memories. There's a little room leading to the stairs outside at the back of their house. Back in the 80s, Dad closed in the wall that was once a door (first photo) and my parents let me paint and draw on that wall, until they would paint over it. That was about 21-22 years ago. "My" wall is still there. Dad wouldn't paint over it. Mum recently found a whole bunch of drawings I did while at University, and she pinned them up. I forgot I ever did them!
My Dad, in particular, is very sentimental and attached to things that hold memories, which is probably why he is such a hoarder. (Oh, I guess that's where I get it from!).
My Nonna, his mother, was the same. She would hoard EVERYTHING. She wouldn't throw out any cards, she even kept the wrappings (to re-use, to my absolute horror!). She always made me write names and dates on the back of photos. It used to annoy the heck out of me, as a kid I couldn't understand why there was a need, why we wouldn't just automatically remember who is in the photo and when it was taken. But now, I understand. There's also the 'placenta brain' concept ~ where you 'lose it' while pregnant, and never get it back, ha!
So now, the chain continues, and we're seeing little guy's artwork mixed in with old sketches of mine that Mum even framed after so many years.
You know, with my computer woes recently ~ I actually backed up all my photos, onto CDs and DVDs, for safe keeping. I wiped them off the hard drive. Then, when I wanted to look up something on CD, the disc drive showed as BLANK. Every single disc. I ran to my hubby, balling my eyes out, blubbering about how we lost all our photos from when the little guy was 2 - 5 years old. But, thankfully, the photos are there on the CDs, just my drive decided it won't work. PHEW. (I guess, the lesson learned there is, even with all this new technology... get photos printed, or make a photobook. Something you can physically hold!)
And keep your favourite pieces of art... like Mum did here, of a mixed media screen print I did in year 10
and Dad's favourite of mine, a watercolour of an old football photo he had.
The little man has show-and-tell tomorrow. Things have changed since I was at school ~ his teacher heard he has a camera and asked him to bring it in tomorrow ~ she said she will hook it up to the computer, and be able to show the photos to the kids on their big projector screen. He's so excited :-) He loves making memories, and recording them, and revisiting them, over and over again. Hope his classmates enjoy looking at 50 photos of his feet and toes, LOL!
Enjoy making your memories,
Natasha xo
So I'm just going to share a few pics of what we have been up to. Leaving the stories for the girl herself. After all, it was HER holiday (vacation, hehehe).
We ate and drank some delicious and unusual things.....
