On my wedding day, my mom gave me a binder filled with laminated copies of all of the family Christmas letters going back to 1968 - their first Christmas together. I read all of the letters and realized that these letters are a journal of our family's life together. I love pulling out the binder and rereading them. My favorites are the year I was born, the year I was married, the years my children joined our big family. I soon realized that documenting my family is going to be very important to me and the biggest gift I am going to give my children. I wanted to follow the tradition my mother started and I also started writing a Christmas letter the first year. The first few years may have been a little boring to others. The purpose of my Christmas letter is to document my family's year. Filling in all of our friends and families on our activities is just a bonus.
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| I don't know why I can't turn this but here is the page for 2010. |
I keep a Family Journal of what we do each year. It's nothing fancy, just a small dimestore (love that word!) notebook. About once a month, I write down things we did that month. I also add the kids milestones, birthday gifts given and received, etc. I also love scrapbooking. I mentioned earlier the family scrapbook with one page for each year. I love this book and I love watching the kids grow in one location and not having to thumb through lots of albums. The reason I started the Family Journal was so I could easily update the Family Album each September (our anniversary). I also keep a shoebox under my bed for ticket stubs, programs, etc. to add to the family album page. Each child has a really nice First Year Scrapbook. Laci has three now for her first three years. Then Calvin was born. After his first year album, I am a little burned out on scrapbooking. I hope I get back to it. I still print out the pictures periodically and file them in envelopes. The extra church offering envelopes are great for this purpose. I can write the activities and stories on the envelope and back of the pictures. Later, I can easily go back and put the pictures in scrapbooks. I have thought about digital scrapbooking but I am not quite there yet for the kids. I have made several digital scrapbooks for other occasions. I like to use the kids artwork and crafts as the backgrounds for the scrapbook. I keep several pictures and date them so I can add them to the appropriate pages. Maybe when the kids get older, I will go to the digital albums. :)
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| I still don't know why I can't turn it. This is the first year I did. Not a lot of detail yet. |
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| I really like this page of Laci's. It has both her crafts and all of the valentines she got that year in school. |
One of the greatest gifts I can give to our children is memories and time spent together. Unfortunately, memories fade. So my mission is to capture them and keep them forever. I look forward to presenting our family history to our children on their wedding days - the day their own families begin.
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