Our Family Video Diary
A minute a day
Our life in action
Have you ever thought of how great it would be to be able to actually look back and see a couple of minutes of your childhood? Maybe sitting with your family for dinner, watching your favorite TV show/cartoon, playing with your parent, being read a book by Mom or Dad? I wish I was so lucky, but at least I can do this for my kids. Here is my challenge to you…
I heard about this great concept from listening to one of my favorite talk radio shows, Dennis Prager. He talked about how priceless it would be for us to be able to look back at our young days with our family. Oh, what I would give to be able to watch my dad get home as we would all run to his legs chanting, “Daddy’s home! Daddy’s home!” What I would give to see all my brothers and sisters sitting at the dinner table on a Sunday afternoon with our regular Sunday meal, fried chicken and fixings. I would love to see a time when my sisters and I played school or store or house or put on a play. These moments now only live in my mind and the only way to really relive them is when I sit with the rest of my siblings to fill in the details and really paint a colorful memory for each other.
Many people, like myself, seem to always have a video camera, digital camera or phone handy when a significant occasion or milestone is upon us. I have videos of Christmas, first crawl, first walk, birthdays etc. What I was neglecting to document was those ordinary day-to-day activities that really make up ninety percent of our lives. Those “ordinary” moments are when I see my family in action. I love seeing my husband playing with our boys, seeing my kids eating at their little people table during dinner (that they will outgrow before I know it), and seeing my older son read to the younger one. These are moments that I actually remember throughout the week that just warm my heart, but rarely make it to the photo or video bank. Why?
When Prager suggested capturing a moment every day of the year to look back on the year, I thought he was crazy to think I’d have time, enough video storage or worthy moments to capture. He wasn’t talking about a full on documentary however. He said to capture a minute of your day that really captures your day-to-day lifestyle like eating together, conversations with kids, moments we think make up the “ordinary” moments of the day. Aha! This I can do, I thought. Though I didn’t actually start on January 1st (I heard his broadcast in the first week of January), I started sometime in January.
So here is what I basically do, whenever I remember (or you can be savvy and put a reminder in your phone) I grab my video camera and start shooting my minute saying something like this, “It’s, Thursday, February 23rd and we are at the park on a beautiful sunny day…” After the minute of recording (ok, sometimes it does go for two to four minutes) I have one of the boys say “bye” to the camera. I’ve captured my boys eating breakfast, watching their favorite show, playing with Daddy, riding their bikes, talking to each other, etc. It is so fun to watch because sometimes they don’t even realize they are being recorded and when they realize they are they immediately want to watch what they were saying or doing.
Here is one of the clips…
Hope you can enjoy some great moments with your family by capturing it one minute a day for the year. It’s only February and I already can’t wait to look back at our year. By the end of this year we’ll have another member of the family (baby #3) and these will be the months we were still a family of four.
HAVE A GREAT WEEK-END!
I LOVE MY FAMILY!!!
Training Up My Boys 
Leave a Reply