Day 5 - Scrapbooking

Once a month (if we can swing it) a few friends and I get together to scrap.

I LOVE scrapbooking.

I'm not gonna lie, I'm a bit obsessed.  I see nothing wrong with being obsessed with Scrapbooking.  Why, you may ask? 

Because for me, Scrapbooking is a stress reliever.  It's a way for me to be creative.  To work with my hands in a different way I would at my job every other day.  And it's a way for me to preserve memories.

I love looking at pictures, remembering certain moments in my life and the smile that they inevitably bring to my face. 

The way looking at one of my pictures from high school can take me back to that carefree moment with all my girlfriends.  Or how now, when we get together and take our crazy group picture, I think of the laughing and silliness that no doubt was part of figuring out the angle the camera needed to be to get the shot just right.

Or how I can look at pictures from college and it makes me think how much I miss my nursing girls and the sleepovers we used to have.  I almost want to run into the other room to pop in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

I love looking through the past 10 years...my nieces and nephews who were babies feel like they're all grown up now. How little they looked and how you could tell just by watching them observe their older siblings that they couldn't wait to be big and do what their brother/sister were doing. Looking at life through their eyes and wondering when we lose that passion for learning about the world and all that's in it.

The early pictures of Chris and I dating.  They make me think about how we used to take walks together every night and just talk.  It makes me think of the first time he took me to his parents house and we stayed up until 3am telling each other stories of our childhoods.  How far we've come as a couple.

Our engagement story is forever written down and documented.  How Chris came up with the idea of how to propose to me all on his own.  And it was beautiful, and romantic, and perfectly us.

Our wedding pictures...I finally married my best friend.  The commitments made that day that will last a lifetime...and how even though we're 7 years out from that day, those promises we still hold onto strong.  As much as we loved each other then, we love each other even more now...and how is that even possible?

And in years to come my nieces and nephews will see those albums and how much joy their Uncle Chris and Aunt Holly had spending time with them.  How much love we have for them.

One day, hopefully, when we have children, they'll appreciate the time their Mom took to document the story of her life, and their Dads life, and our life together.  Maybe it will give them a better understooding of who their parents are, were, aspired to be. 

Scrapbooking lets me go back in time to those special memories I hold close to my heart.

And no, it's not the same as looking at pictures in an album or on the computer.  With scrapbooking you can journal about the funny, loving, sad, creative, etc things that were said or done during those moments...that maybe weren't captured in those pictures.  You can explain exactly what you were feeling in that very moment. 

Those words, those explanations...I may not always be able to pass on if I just put my pictures in a photo album. 

How will my great grandkids know how special a moment that was...if I don't write it down.

So that's why I scrapbook...that's why it means so much to me.  That's why it's one of my obsessions.