Dear Diary..........

Whilst visiting my family, I have been helping my sister to get some photos together for my grandad, and put them onto a dvd so that he can sit and watch all his favourites of my grandma, and a few of us as kids and growing up, so that he doesn't have to get the boxes and boxes and bags of pictures out! Well, I suppose after 70+ years you accumulate quite a few! I think I counted 6 albums, 2 chest boxes, a shoe box and carrier with at least 10 envelopes full of photos. It was strange going through them, remembering a few, and not remembering so much. Then there were the 'old' photos, the sepia ones of long lost family, who we hadn't a clue were. My grandad was a handsome, if somewhat short man, and my grandma, well, I am pleased to say I think I have inherited some of her good looks! Pictures of us as babies, and then seeing me at my sons age, telling him that was me, it's all so .... I don't know the word, peaceful, surreal? It made me glad that I have been scrap booking, because if things go on, my kids will know who people are, and why and when pictures were taken, and get a clip pet on how people were, and they were as kids. I think that is important, and wish scrap booking had been around all those years ago. I am sure my grandma would have loved and indulged so much into it.

Also, we came across an old cigar box, another memory of the book sized box with cut glass mirrors on, and we sneaked a peek, you know, in case we had missed any photos! And we found postcards, letters, drawings we had done as children, and cards hand made for my grandparents by us. It was so sweet and lovely. It brought a tear to my eye. She was so thoughtful my grandma. I am going to start keeping little things my kids do for me, and get a box to keep them all in. And it also made me think how things have changed, I used to write to them and my friends when I was young, now we live in an age of the Internet, and I don't write anymore.

I am going to take note of this and buy a writing pad today, and sit and write a letter to my grandad, and try to do one every week, just so he feels close, as he had a tear in his eye as we left, and so did I. I hate using the phone, it feels so impersonal, but writing I love, as you can tell! I remember doing an assignment at school, one writing a piece as a journalist for a newspaper, and one as a letter to a friend, and I got an A+ for my friends letter! I have always remembered that, despite forgetting so much! And it also got me thinking, that this blog in effect is my diary.