The funny thing about family stories

Dug this treasure out of the May 2008 file.

At bedtime, my boys like to hear stories. They don't care if they're made up or not, but they do particularly enjoy true stories about Tyler and me when we were growing up. I've learned I can never go wrong with the story about me barfing in the school parking lot or with the one where I got busted by my dad at our neighborhood bike track after he told me to stay home and keep my bike put away. Night before last Brevin asked me about the night he was born and I could give him some sketchy details at best. I couldn't really remember the particulars about his birth. Whoops. Product of being our middle child, I s'pose. That AND the fact that 4 out of my 5 births have been middle of the night-ers and all my boys started pretty similar. I actually had the thought that I was going to have to call my sister to get most of the details of their births since she has a memory like a trap and has been there every time my kids were borned.

Today's after school activity once homework was done should have been to unload the dishwasher and put away clothes. However, instead I pulled up the pictures we have on the computer from the three boys births and I narrated their stories from a couple weeks before up until their blessing day. They were most interested in how their older siblings reacted to them and how big I was the days before birth. I was surprised at how much they weighed since I don't keep that info on my mind file. . . I know Kenz was my biggest at 7#15, but the rest gets kinda fuzzy. It kinda got me excited for Scrapfest in a couple weeks so I can actually record some more of the family memories before I forget more and more of the deets.

After the kids had their fill, I went back and looked at some of the old pictures and was loving on all the pictures of my nieces and nephews who've grown up with our kids. How blessed I am to have my kids have their cousins as such good friends. There's nothing more awesome than 2 year old little boys (Hayden and Conner) digging in the dirt and have another picture of the two of them as 8 year olds! So fun. Since today's my niece Sydney's birthday, I was marvelling at how she is 13!!! years old today. All the pictures of her and Kenz kinda made my heart swell a bit realizing 2/3 or their time with their folks has passed. Before we know it they'll be headed to college together. (Erin and I have already picked out their dorms at BYU... have y'all seen the new DT dorms? Gorgeous.)

When Tyler got home and started to make dinner (he's on this vegan kick) he wondered aloud what I was doing looking at pictures. I told him how the kids and I were trippin' down memory lane. His response was, "who cares? It's all about the future." Of course, he's just giving me a hard time. I do think a lot more about the future, but I LOVE remembering the past. We've been blessed with such good people and family in and out of our lives the past 15 years and it's fun to remember specifically (with the aid of pictures for me who is memory deficient) those events and times and cute baby outfits and the time when I could afford fake nails and ward parties and young men/young women activities, etc.

(And trust me... I found some doozies of many of you who are actually reading this post. I'm tempted to make a facebook album of random pictures from the Barlow family files... they may consider that file for the technological Smithsonian one day. THAT's how good some of them are!)

I am headed back to the school for a hot session of grading tonight, so I will miss story time when bedtime comes. See. . . it's a good thing we spend the afternoon doing that [read: doing nothing but looking at pictures this afternoon] instead! Peace out!