Journaling

I have been surfing the web for the last few weeks to find a better way to journal. Up to now I have put maybe a few sentences on a page and called it a day. If I was feeling ambitious I could get a whole paragraph. Searching the blogs of such wise people like The Fabulous Adventures of Listgirl, Simple Scrapper, Focus on the Story, and others I have started to rethink my journaling and started writing out the stories I want my kids and grandkids to know.

Today I started writing about Josh's birth. I found a list of questions and wrote in my journal as if I was being interviewed by my son. He would ask such questions as: When/How did you find out you were pregnant with me? What was your reaction to the news? What is the story behind my name? I was amazed at what I remembered, and what was fuzzy. Josh is 18 now and as I look back to all the funny stories, first steps, first tooth, first haircut memories that I have to put down on paper I thank God that most of these stories have been told to my kids by both my ex-husband and myself for as long as I can remember.

I am sure there are some fish tales, some stretching of the truth and just plain fabrications mixed in with all the old stories but I want my kids to know more about themselves and their parents than I do. I am lucky, my parents are still around for me to ask them but my ex's aren't and we have a lot of history that has gone down the drain.

Journaling has become passe as of late. The more artistic layouts are cropping up, even my own quick pages reflect this trend but I don't want to make the mistake of doing all "artsy" pages and miss out on sharing the history with the boys, their kids and the generations to come.

God Bless