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Keeping Family Journals
Keeping a journal or diary is not only beneficial to you as an individual, but also to your family. Do you remember the family vacation to Disneyland when you were 12? What about your parent's 20-year anniversary? Or your birthday party when you turned 15? The new house you moved into in 8th grade? High school graduation?
All those family memories from family events -- all those moments in time, now past.
A family journal is a book, or a series of books, where family members can journal about any event that has taken place. For example, there could be one individual journal that you take to every family reunion to capture current events year to year. It could have photos, memorabilia and journal entries from those who attended the reunion. The journal could also include letters, announcements and other updates from family members.
Parents can journal daily to their children and include photos, drawings and other memorabilia. Grandparents can create a family journal filled with pictures, thoughts, and experiences of the grandkids. Children can start a journal to their parents, sharing their experiences, dreams and desires. The family can keep a sports, singing, dance, or other activities journal to record memorable moments and events.
You can create a family travel journal. It is packed and taken along on every family vacation. Each family member can journal their daily or weekly experiences. This is a great place to add photos of your vacation as well as other items such as addresses and phone numbers of where you stayed, names of restaurants where you ate, or monuments or other attractions you visited. You can even include other souvenirs that were collected during each trip.
For those that take photos with Santa, this can be a wonderful family memory that you can record from year to year. From a child's first Christmas, the picture taken with Santa can document growth and memories. You can also take the family to a special place and take an annual photo. The special place can be in the back yard or at the mountains, anywhere your family enjoys being together. Then each person can journal where they are and what they are doing that year. The younger children can draw a picture or write with a crayon in the family journal.
Your family journal can include the house or houses in which you lived. You can document your family homes throughout the years. If you never moved, you can take photos of when you changed the paint color, or as the foliage grew. Each family member can write an annual memory of living in that home.
Another function of your family journal can be to record health histories of your family members. This becomes a medical journal for easy reference to past medical histories. At the same time, you can record your family tree.
A family journal becomes a treasured keepsake and a wonderful, memorable project and adventure that the whole family can work on together. This is something that becomes a priceless treasure book filled with memories that can be enjoyed for decades to come.
About the Author
Doreene Clement, a cancer victor and author of The 5 Year Journal, is currently writing a new book, Blessed, about her life and her cancer experience. For more information vist her site above of call 480.423.8095 Copyright 2005 OMDC, LLC All Rights Reserved
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