Picture-rama

One of the greatest joys I've found in having some financial stability again is that I have a little extra money to pursue one of my all-time favorite hobbies--scrapbooking.  I used to scrapbook like crazy  In high school, I documented everything in pictures and spent oodles of cash at the local scrapbook store finding the perfect papers and stickers and cutouts.  In college, I didn't have the time or money to really keep up with it anymore, and so my lovely little "University" scrapbook has sat empty for nigh on these many years.  I have pictures from a trip to Europe several years ago that have languished on my computer along with shots from my wedding, honeymoon, family vacations, and random nights out.  When my computer died a few weeks ago and the retrieval of my hard-drive's contents was unsure, I felt almost sick about all this--that I might lose all these precious pictures that were the tactile reminders of happy memories, never having had the chance to print them and document them appropriately.  When the hard drive was saved, I promised that one of the first things I would do when we got our tax refund was to start printing pictures.  

It's now spring break, we have our money, and I have my computer back.  A few days ago, I sat with my external hard drive where things were backed up and transferred over 4,000 pictures back to my mac.  When iPhoto opened, each picture flashed in front of me from a split second as they loaded, and it was a surreal experience--my life, quite literally flashing before my eyes.  And as I watched each moment go by, I thought about how if life really does flash before your eyes when you die, that I would be ok if it looked like this, with all of these pictures--my little sister smiling on her graduation day, me in front of the Trevi fountain, my former teammates laughing, my entire family crammed together for an impromptu beach shot, the close-ups of stupid-happy giddy smiles that mark self-portrait pictures taken the moment after D and I got engaged, my first view of the flowers on my wedding day, our first dance, our honeymoon hikes, my dog and parents and grandparents and family and friends.  Christmases, vacations, school.  All of them happy.  All of them smiling.  

Sometimes it's so easy to get bogged down in a dreary moment, or day, or week.  There are times I let myself get so hung up on the little (or big) things that just aren't going right that it's hard to see the big picture.  But the big picture is really just a series of small ones--all those happy moments that remind me that even in the darkest of days my life has been pretty darn amazing so far and stands to continue in that direction if I just relax and let it happen and find the picture-perfect memories still interwoven with everything else.