Nostalgia

In the dark recesses of our bedroom closet, for the last 10 years or so, we have had a giant shoebox filled with video camera tapes from over the years just sitting, collecting dust. Most of them aren't labeled and we didn't even have the right kind of camera anymore to see what is on them.

My dear husband decided he wanted to save them to the computer, so he looked on craigslist (the ultimate garage sale) and found someone selling an old videocamera that would work to play them back and save them to the computer. Yesterday he went to pick it up, so last night we tested it out by sticking a random tape in to see if it would work.

My almost 14 year old son was completely mortified to discover that it was video of him when he was about 6 months old, crawling around in a diaper and babbling and doing all the cute things babies do. Talk about bringing back memories! He was so cute and we were so young. The girls loved seeing their big brother as a baby and we all laughed at his antics. It was really fun to watch, although my son insists he will never think so. We told him to wait until he has kids and then he'll understand.

We watched about 45 minutes of different video clips. There are so many things that I have forgotten in the busyness of the years. A Christmas visit from my brother Dan (when he still had hair!!), complete with footage from the All-Star Cafe at Wide World of Sports. There were brief glimpses of me pregnant with Sierra. There was video from my brother Josh's wedding reception, and I laughed watching my younger siblings (that would be you Grace and Gabe!! and Luke and possibly Isaac, I'll have to look again) doing the Macarena on the dance floor with the bride. There was footage of Sarah and I and our cousin Noelle dancing with Josh during the dollar dance, as well as the beautiful bride Laura dancing with baby Nathan. I also had tears in my eyes seeing my brother Luke dancing with his new sister-in-law - I have a photo of that as well that is one of my favorites of him. It was impossible not to think how dramatically life would change for him (and the rest of the family) in the few years that followed. Oh, so many memories...

As I said, there is a whole shoebox to go through still, and I have to say, I'm looking forward to seeing what else is there. I am not very good at taking pictures and video - that has always been up to my dear husband, and he's done a great job over the years - and watching the little that we did last night makes me realize how important it really is. So I'm going to work on being better about taking the initiative to film/photograph more often. I know when I'm old and gray, I'll be glad I did.