Creating Memory Books

I have a beautiful refurbished antique barrel back trunk that my parents gave me several years ago and it's full of pictures.  One of the items on my retirement "to do" list is to organize these pictures into photo albums.  These photos are all that I have collected before the digital years.  Remember when we snapped pictures then had the film developed into prints?  Last year when I was asked by my daughter's future brother-in-law for pictures of her to put into a wedding rehearsal slide show, I organized them by year from birth to college before handing them over.  It was then that I decided it would be a good idea to organize all of the family pictures into photo albums while I still had the ability to recall which pictures belong to which decade.  

Twenty months ago when my mother passed away and everyone was gathered at my family's home, my kids and their cousins sat together on the living room floor pouring over old pictures for several hours.  It was the first time during that long sad week that I heard them laughing, reminiscing and having a good time together.  It was easy to pull out old photo albums and give everyone an album to comb through.  Now our pictures are all on a flash drive, SD card, phone or computer.  Digital files of pictures are great, but nothing beats looking at photo albums with family members - photo albums that you can pick up off the shelf and relish while sitting on the floor - photo albums that tell a story.  How many times have we taken beautiful pictures of a vacation or family event, never to see them again, never to share them with family or friends?  

In addition to arranging our family prints into photo albums, which I call memory books, I use the digital pictures from trips and events to put together memory books which I create online.  I create a book for each trip with images and text that tell a story and gift a memory book to each "tripmate."  Each year for Christmas, each one of my kids (and spouses) gets a family yearbook with pictures taken during the year.  I use pictures snapped by me and by the kids to create a memory book and order a hard copy.  It's therapeutic putting them together and they love these memory books.    My barrel back trunk will soon contain photo albums organized by decade and trip!