The Gift of Family Memories

A few years ago I was helping my parents prepare their house for sale. It was time for them to downsize. The four bedroom house that I grew up in was now too big. My childhood home was going to become someone else’s home.

There are so many memories within those walls: My sisters and I playing with our “Barbies”, the ballets and plays we performed for our parents in the living room, cooking Mom breakfast in bed for her birthday, Thanksgiving dinners, piano lessons, watching home movies, the list seems endless.

While we were cleaning, we took a break and looked through all our family photo albums. Starting with the black and white baby photos, family vacations, high school prom photos (what was that guys’ name), weddings and now grandchildren.

But wait – where are all the photos of my parents’ childhood? Finding a couple of boxes buried within a closet revealed a treasure. Photo albums and lots of loose pictures of my parents as children – WOW!

I took them home and sorted through them making a pile for each decade. I guessed the age of Mom and Dad to help with the sorting. I recognized Mom and Dad, but I still needed help identifying the other people. The next time I visited my parents I asked the all important questions: who, what, where, when as well as anything else they could remember about each photo. I got some wonderful background stories, even stories I had never heard before.

A decision needed to be made: what to do with all these photos and the information I was blessed to learn. If we put everything back in the boxes (although it’s much neater now) will someone take the time to pull it all out and look at it. Probably not.

I saw such enjoyment in my parents faces as they told their stories and “relived” all those memories. A light bulb went on – I would give them the gift of family memories in the form of a photo book. After all I know how to bring faded photos back to life.

I happily took on this project, but kept it a surprise. Not only would their photos be preserved, protected and easy to look at, these photo books would also be a gift to our entire family. What a priceless moment when I presented the photo books to them. The look of joy on each of their faces was an extra gift to me.

You too can give this gift. Gather your photos, get the details about each picture and transform them into a photo book. I would be happy to turn your memories into pages of sentiment.

Contact me for more information.