The Reason Why I Scrapbook!

I haven't really mentioned it unless it is to people that need to know for work purposes and so on. However, my grandmother (who we call MeeMaw) has Alzheimer's. I am not going to go into detail about how we found out, the progression, and so on. This is out of respect from my family and MeeMaw herself.
That being said, I stayed over at my parent's house last night. She is living with them now. I loaded up all my scrapbooks to take with me. I just knew that she would enjoy that. I am pretty sure I got my love of photos from her! Her boxes and boxes of photos. Frames everywhere you can imagine. Photos stuck in her tv edges. Constantly taking our photos growing up. Well, that is me now. lol.

The one difference is I take my photos and turn them into digital scrapbooking layouts. I print them out and put them in books. Really I scrapbook for myself and for my son when he is older. He could care less now. He (and his future wife) will love these books. I just know it. I never thought really about scrapping for the people here and now in my life. Usually I just think that printing out my digital scrapbooking layouts and giving them as gifts gets on their nerves. The constant posting them on FB the same.
My MeeMaw sat and looked at every single page. Not just looked. She read every bit of journaling, looked for the dates, touched every photo, laughed, and talked about each page in debt. We took about 2 hours looking at the books. I am telling you, I have never felt my digital scrapbooking more appreciated as I did last night. She was looking at them again this morning too!

This isn't a staged photo. (I probably couldn't get her to do that anyway. lol). This is about 30 minutes into us looking at the books. I just happened to snap her touching the photos. This page is titled, "The Look." It is about (and you can kind of see it) the look that my son gives when he is annoyed...it is the same exact look I give. She laughed so much at this and agreed. That is his momma's look. :-)

This meant the world to me. To sit here and share these memories with my grandmother. It meant even more because she is such a huge part of who I am today. She stepped up and helped my single momma raise my sister and me. She is also forgetting things. To share memories....really there are no words.

That being said, make sure you take photos! If you are interested in getting into digital scrapbooking, I can point you in the right directions. You don't have to scrap or digital scrap. Take photos, journal, jot notes down. You never know who will enjoy those tangible memories. Not just the future generations.

I also learned something from this. Some of the fonts I have used are not easily legible and I need to put dates and journaling on every page. These are the things she pointed out. (I already was aware of the date thing). That is good to know!! So, word of advise if you are into digital scrapbooking. Use a legible font, date those pages, and jot at least a little something down. AND PRINT THOSE DIGITAL SCRAPBOOKING PAGES!!