Well, it was bound to happen.....you know, that there would be a year in my adult life that I would not be able to get a Christmas Card out in time. Generally speaking, I have my cards completely designed by Thanksgiving and addressed/stamped and out the door by December 1st. No joke. This year, though, absolutely not a chance of that happening. And here it is, Dec. 20th, and I have nothing to mail out. Nada. But, I do have something else to share to make up for it. I decided to play around with my IMovie software on my Mac computer and do a "Highlights of 2009" slideshow for my immediate family showcasing some of my favorite pictures, memories and shortened video clips of the past year. I will not admit to how much time I spent scouring through the THOUSANDS of images I had taken in order to try to pick 100 images or how much time I spent picking the right music, video clips and so on. I ended up with 185 images after multiple "triage" sessions! Typical me, I can never narrow it down.... I love them all. :)
Regardless, the whole project was a ton of work as I did everything from scratch but the end result just makes me smile, and, more importantly, it makes my kids smile, giggle and reminisce when they watch it. And, well, that was THE WHOLE POINT of this project. First and foremost, I did it for them. I wanted them to have something to look back on and have a condensed "review" of that particular year in their lives. Eventually, I plan to get all those thousands of images I took in albums as well, but for now, this was what I wanted, scratch that, NEEDED, to do. Watching them watch this just brings me immeasurable amounts of joy.
MEMORIES. That's why we do these things, right? That's why we bake the cookies and clean up the mess, that's why we do the art projects and spend the next week finding glitter all over the house and silently sweeping it all up. That's why we take them on all these adventures and experiences, to enrich their lives, to expose them to as much as we can, to show them we loved them with our actions as well as our words. We might be more worn out than them by the end of the day, but it's a happy, fulfilled kind of exhaustion.
We all love our children more than life itself. We want to provide for them as best we can. Sure, we falter and fail sometimes, or at the very least, fall short of our "ideal" way of mothering. However, in the end, our children know we love them unconditionally and that's really all that matters when it all comes down to it.
I want for my children to one day look back on this first slideshow (of what I hope to be a yearly tradition from here on out) and for them to really FEEL my love for them, and perhaps maybe a little 'grown up' gratitude for how blessed their childhood truly was. It may not have always been easy and we certainly had our fair share of struggles and challenges this past year (UGH!) but in the end, I want them to remember that they were quite lucky to have the life they had.
This time of year is one of reflection and gratitude. It is about appreciating our many blessings and helping others who are less fortunate. It is about giving, not material things necessarily, but rather of our time, our friendship, our love and our assistance, in any way we can.
My time spent on this slideshow and all the memories held within, which I helped create for my children, is my way of showing them my unequivocal love. They will certainly not truly understand the depth of all that right now but I know one day they will. And perhaps in the future we can all sit around a "space age" computer and watch this together, with their own children laughing along with us. :)
So, in a nutshell, HAPPY HOLIDAYS. :)
I wish all of you the very best for 2010.
Now, go make some memories!
[Be forewarned, the slideshow is TWENTY minutes long. As I said, it was originally intended to be something just for my immediate family but I've decided to send it out to my friends as well as my Holiday Greeting in lieu of my "not gonna happen" holiday card this year. Think of all the trees I"m saving! And stamps!! :) I don't expect anyone to actually sit through the whole thing but I wanted to share it with you all in case anyone wanted to see it or wanted to try it for themselves as something to do for their own family.]
CLICK HERE FOR SLIDESHOW
(for some reason the web/online version is very FUZZY and soft and the colors are all WAY off.... which is aggravating, just know that the original version is quite nice looking!)