Family videos

You know what is a strange yet wonderful yet scary thing? Having videos of your entire puberty burned on to DVD and sent to you! My dad got a video camera when I was seven or eight and used it fairly regularly from that point until I was about 15 or 16.

The benefit - the really really great part is seeing my grandparents who have been gone for eleven years. I was very close to them and being able to have voices, movement and faces - much more than I can have with a photograph - is priceless.

However. Braces...big thick glasses...tinted lenses...impossible hair...moodiness...acne... All this I could have done without seeing again! I was in three years of chorus, so that's six chorus shows. Plus three voice recitals. Plus speech club, science fairs, birthday parties, Christmas', Thanksgivings, and the list goes on and on!

I was trying to figure out how to cut out clippets of these embarrassing moments of my life and share them with you, but my dad recorded the DVD's in a format that is not compatible with my Windows Movie Player (which is odd, considering that is what it was edited on...could be operator error on this end, I suppose). I have done the next best (or worst) thing... I took a couple stills while the fun was rolling... This is what I have the benefit of living through...again!

My mom says, "Honey - you were cute!!!" My mom allegedly has perfect vision. I realize I was no where near cute!!!

But this is my life...on video! Cool because I get to see people (grandparents and cats like Kitty Foo Foo in the last of the three video stills) who meant so much to me. Scary because...OMG the teen years were difficult!! But it is nice to know that when I want to hear my family, I just have to pop them in my DVD drive and they are with me all the time!