Photographs and Memories

January is so quiet compared to December. It's a good time to get necessary but unpleasant things done like getting my taxes documents organized and my annual mammogram done. (Yuk!)

At work, we welcome this time to have food tastings with our couples, plan new menus, paint the kitchen, and plan for the season ahead.

It's also a good time to reflect. Tim is doing so well now and we continue to be so grateful for all of the support and love we have been continually given by so many people. Jack is doing great, too! He has been working and is healthy and strong enough to go on a month-long ski trip out west!

You usually don't realize when you go through traumatic times, that good things are happening, too. The last 5 years have been a whirlwind for me and I have heard the same from many of you, too. I have pretty much been in high gear and have had very little time to think.

It was only when I started scrolling through the hundreds of pictures on my phone, which go all the way back to 2015, that I realized there were lots of good times, too. (After all, who takes pictures of bad times except newspaper reporters?)

Jack gave me one of those digital frames for Christmas. (I didn't realize I needed one 'til I got it.). These things have been greatly improved since they first came out. For one, you don't need a zip drive of photos to come off of your computer, though you still can do that, too. Since all of my pictures are on the Cloud, I was able to use an app on my phone, developed by the frame company, to choose the pictures I wanted on my frame. The transfer process was quick and easy.

Hundreds of pictures were just languishing on my phone and then all of a sudden, there they were in constant rotation and enlarged on my 10 inch frame! Instant gratification!

Do you know when a photo pops up as a "memory" on Facebook? Isn't that nice? Well, I have that all day long. It's awesome!!!

I keep my frame in my kitchen, on the side table, next to the dining room table. It has become a bit of a distraction during dinnertime but our family enjoys it, too

Here's another great feature, you can email your pictures to the frame. All of the members of Tim's family put one together for Tim's 85-year-old mom Rita and sent it to her. She just had to "plug and play" it. She absolutely loved it. If she wants to connect her Wifi to it in the future, the family can update it by email with new pictures. Jack wants to send her pictures from his trip so we have to ask Uncle Mark for help with the Wifi part, please, help!

We had a lot of fun putting together Rita's frame. I even took pictures of beloved, framed ,family pictures and they came out pretty good-good enough! I also went through my very long text chains and found a lot of great pictures shared with me that I hadn't even downloaded. (By the way, it's so easy to do this now. There is a box next to each picture. You just check it and it downloads to your phone. Who knew?)

I guess you can tell that I am really excited about this, but I'm telling you it is a really good thing to have. I HIGHLY recommend it. I think it will replace the photo album which takes so long to put together, is looked at for a little while, and is, eventually put on a shelf, where its pictures are hidden once again. (I procrastinate when it comes to sending thank you notes and putting together photo albums, so this is another plus for me!)

My frame reminds me of the good times every day. Hopefully, I'll be adding some new pictures to it soon!