I have recently undertaken the monumental task of getting all of our family photos into albums...in chronological order. I thought I was doing myself a favor because I had completely and unashamedly given up on the whole scrapbooking enterprise because I realized how unbelievably unrealistic it was to sort, crop, matte, frame, decorate, journal, etc. the sheer volume of pictures we have accumulated over the years. In fact, the last thing I tried to scrapbook was a baby album for Christopher and I think I made it from birth to about 1-2 months old before setting it aside, never to be picked up again. Nearly 5 years and 2 more children have come along since then, along with a flood of photographs documenting every stage of their development, not to mention every family get together.
The thought of beginning this process where I left off was rather daunting, so I thought I'd begin with photos from Hannah's birth and fill up the albums until I was caught up to the present. I quickly filled up 4 1/2 albums (each album holds 300 4x6 photos), so that's approximately 1300+ photos taken in the first 11 months of Hannah's life. Last night I backtracked and started filling a new set of albums beginning with Sarah's birth (11/20/04) going forward until Hannah was born. I filled 5 albums but still have a year's worth of pictures left until Hannah's birth date. And there's a pretty sizable stack of photos from that year! Needless to say, I'm a little overwhelmed.
What overwhelms me even more is then backtracking to the year and 1/2 before Sarah was born. Christopher, who was our firstborn child and the first grandchild on both sides of our family, saw his fair share of camera flashes as a baby. You remember me kidding about my mom being a "Chinese tourist", true to the cultural stereotype? Well, I have tangible PROOF that she cannot enjoy life without a camera in her hand! Every time she would fly down to Texas or we would come to Pennsylvania for a visit, she would take a gazillion pictures and always give us the duplicates. Last night as I was going through pictures from Sarah's babyhood, I picked up a LARGE stack and showed it to John saying, "See this stack of photos? These were taken over the span of 4 days...ALL by my mom." And that was after Sarah was born. Before Sarah was born, we traveled to PA and my mom traveled down here more frequently. We also went to Maine with my mom and her sister as well as to Vancouver TWICE with my mom and all of our Chinese relatives. You can only imagine how many times we posed for group pictures...
So I have filled up 9 1/2 albums (that's nearly 3000 photos) and I'm still swimming in a sea of photographs stored in boxes...but I am determined to press on. Another thing that I find amusing is that I believed the myth that switching from film to digital photography would lessen the load of pictures we actually develop since you "only develop the really good ones." The problem with digital photography is that you end up taking a gazillion MORE photos than you would with film and a good fraction of that gazillion is considered a 'keeper.' Plus, even if some pictures don't turn out perfectly, there's always photo software to edit your not-so-perfect prints.
Now that I've ranted and raved about this overwhelming task, I must say that I've really enjoyed seeing all of these pictures again! It's so nice to get them out of boxes and display them in such a way that we'll actually get to see them. My kids have thoroughly enjoyed flipping through the albums as well...something I would NOT let them do with pictures just shoved in a box. Where to store these giant albums when I'm finished is going to be another task for another day...
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