Seven years ago, I married my best friend in the whole world. My life at the time was crazy messy, but we escaped to paradise and I can still remember it like it was yesterday.
This year for our anniversary, we celebrated by loading our little family into the car and trekking north to Iowa for a hot, hot, HOT Memorial Day day-trip. We ran some errands and spent the bulk of our day at a water park, where our sweet girl whimpered (all day) at the water. As if to say, “thanks guys, but I’d rea—whoa, whoa, don’t put me down . . . I’d really rather n—whoa, don’t get me wet! . . . hey guys, let’s just not.” Sweet, silly girl.
I know it doesn’t sound super romantic on the surface, I mean, I started by saying “we ran some errands . . .” but it was actually really lovely. I love our little family, and getting to spend an entire day together, not paying attention to where we were headed next or even what time it was, was exactly what we needed. On our way home, with our sweet sun-kissed girl napping in the backseat, I just kept thinking about how different our life is now than it was seven years ago. Seven doesn’t seem like that many years, but it feels like we’ve lived a lifetime since then.
On our drive home, I started thinking about the honeymoon we’d taken seven years ago. How absolutely incredible our trip was . . . and how I hadn’t come across any vacation pictures in a long time. Then I started to get a bit nervous. Admittedly, I’m not always the most organized when it comes to old personal archives, so I began to worry that I’d managed to misplace our photos. So, when Kyle left the next morning for an out-of-town work trip, I stayed up extra late combing through external hard drives.
To my absolute joy, I found even more than I remembered! Not only did I find all of our pictures, but videos as well! As I began watching it, I started to remember Kyle pulling out the phone to record pieces of our trip. I remembered how all I could think was that I hate being caught on film, how uncomfortable it was to have my brand new husband filming me walking around our hotel (this was before the age of the selfie), blah blah blah.
Lesson #1: NEVER shy away from your husband filming your awesome vacations. Never. Watching it now, I wish we’d had ourselves in more footage! What a silly girl I was. I also remember thinking, “what could we possibly use all of this disjointed footage for?”
Lesson #2: NEVER say no to filming awesome vacations. Just do it. Even if the footage doesn’t seem cohesive or pretty or whatever. Just capture some memories. I remember my honeymoon like it was yesterday, but seeing it in moving picture form is a whole other thing.
Of course, it’s also important to actually make the memories – don’t hide behind your phone the whole time.
But for goodness sake, whip out that super nice camera that you already carry in your pocket, and record a bit of what you’re seeing.
Because we were married in 2011, which was an entire technological era ago, all pictures and video were taken with an iPhone 2 (hold your applause). While the quality seemed great at the time, my now well-developed video snobbery immediately kicked in while watching the footage I’d found, and I thought, “hmm . . . what can I even do with this?” I loved finding it, and there’s no question that it’s worth a great deal to me, but the videographer in me watched that footage wondering how I could salvage it.
Bring on the apps.
Inspired by my friend Abby’s honeymoon video (which is awesome, and you can watch here), I decided to embrace the terrible film quality and go all out. This automatically solved basically every issue with the film. Color correction? Not necessary. Figuring out how to combine portrait and landscape footage? Make it square. Shaky, walking cameraman? Who cares! I ran that footage through an app and pieced it together. Cue mellow, analog-sounding, romantic soundtrack and call it done! I know this isn’t the best-ever video in the history of videos, but I went from zero honeymoon footage, to a finished, sweet, nostalgic honeymoon video and I can’t stop watching it. (Ps. I know it’s long, but I love it . . . so there.)
One of my dad’s favorite quotes was, “we didn’t realize we were making memories, we just knew we were having fun.”
This week reminded me of that. No day that I spend with my family will be too small or insignificant to become a memory.
Whether we’re playing in paradise or playing at a small-town water park – I want to remember.
Possibly my favorite thing about this video is the perspective it offers. This is mostly Kyle’s view of our honeymoon, and I think that’s why it feels so personal to me. He wasn’t trying to be a professional videographer, or get sweet video of picturesque beaches, (although, in my opinion, he happened to do that also). He just captured moments.
I hope this encourages you to capture some new memories, and inspires you to revive any old memories that are sitting in photo boxes or lost on hard drives. And I’d love to hear your ideas for keeping/using/saving old pictures and videos!
Time does Fly, wheN we are in A place where God directs our path! I think one of the most special Things was that Kyle surprised you with the location and having Autumn pack your suitcase! God will continue to bless your little moments of your lives!
So true! And yes, there were so many awesome things about our honeymoon – I could make a whole post dedicated just to the trip itself!