How time gets away…literally where has the time gone – meaning both this afternoon and the past few years….
What began as clearing out a small attic room to make room for the in-laws and cousins next week finished by watching an afternoon of old family videos of the when the kids where young.
We spent the morning clearing the room out and dumping stuff becoming more and more sentimental as the kids were throwing out old unwanted toys and cuddly toys etc with comments such as “Ah you can’t throw that out – you got that from such & such or we got when we were on holidays in Spain etc.
I guess that’s part of trying of trying to hang onto where we came from.
After lunch I connected up an old laptop to some speakers so that the kids and their cousins can up to the attic room and watch Netflix – I later heard roars of laughter coming from the attic and went up to find that the kids had discovered a heap of never before seen videos of when we lived in Ireland when they were younger – we then spent the next 3 hours watching old holiday and Christmas videos of when the kids were younger.
I have to say that looking back they were very happy days – with lots of great times, filled with joy and laughter. Looking back on the videos it only seems like yesterday but now the girls are more grown up – we probably don’t do as much together as a family. Plus back in the day I was working from home and a stay at home Dad so I got to do a lot more with the girls – now I seem to spend my life working. It should be getting easier not more difficult as you get older!
It was a really enjoyable afternoon tinged with both joy and sadness. Joy for the fact that it was great to revisit those days and see the girls when they were small and had their Irish accents.
Sadness for the fact that we can never recapture those days and every minute as a parent really should be treasured and enjoyed, as those days really do not last for very long.
I think the thing that struck me later on is how social media in such a short space of time has changed all our lives forever. So now instead of using a video camera to record your holiday or Christmas morning present opening its just random photos posted to Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat.
Nowadays we seem more interested in living in the moment and sharing our lives online rather than trying to save those memories for our kids and future generations to see and listen too.
A Facebook photo doesn’t capture the joy in a kids voice of opening their presents on Christmas morning…
It also struck me that in years to come our grand kids can’t scroll through our Facebook feed to see or hear how their mams or dads were growing up.
So rather than living in the moment get back to videoing those precious moments and downloading them to your pc or laptop for your kids and grandkids to see in years to come.
