Family Yearbooks: Being Intentional with Photos

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If your mom is anything like mine, I’d be willing to bet she has several boxes of photos stashed away in her home somewhere collecting dust. Those pictures might occasionally see the light of day when nostalgia strikes or a new family slideshow needs to be made for cousin Betty’s wedding.

If you really think about it though, is your mom’s desolate photo stash any different from the digital stash of photos we all have on our phones these days? Sure, we might enjoy those sweet pictures for a moment, but the next day rolls around and we take a dozen more burying picture upon picture into a deserted wasteland. Although I don’t have any great ideas as to how to utilize all of the pictures you take, I do have a pretty good way for you to use and enjoy some of your family favorites for years to come. Might I present to you: The Family Yearbook!

Ok, so I know it’s not a new idea, but hear me out. The older I get, the more I find myself wishing I had access to old family photos in a neat, organized manner perhaps sprinkled with bits of information about the people in the pictures. While there just are not enough hours in the day for me to go back and try to resurrect my mom’s old photos, I do have a bit of time to devote to creating a treasure trove of pictures and information for my kids to hopefully enjoy someday.

How am I doing this, you might ask? Well, there are endless options when it comes to companies to create photobooks online, but my personal favorite is Mixbook. When a new year begins, I truly do my best to “keep up” by devoting a little bit of time each month to adding pictures and little snippets of stories to our yearbook online. By doing it monthly, it helps me to really keep up with it so that I’m not overwhelmed at the end of the year trying to slap together a book.

When our yearbook is complete (usually by mid-January of the following year) I wait until they send out a really fantastic coupon code and then order one book for each child plus a copy for my husband and I. The kids’ books get stored in a container in the basement after I take the time to write a personal little note in each book usually sharing things that stood out to me about them that particular year, things they’ve learned, ways they’ve grown, and in the early years – cute mispronunciations of their words.

Yes, creating these yearbooks does take a bit of time and dedication, but to me, it’s absolutely worth it. My ultimate prayer and hope is that my kids will be able to sit down someday with their own children, open up these yearbooks, and share stories of their past. Hopefully, to them, it will be a priceless gift.