Scrapbooking: Celebrate Your Family's History

The art of keeping family history alive does not happen by accident; it requires a small investment of time and a determination to stay the course. The problem is that we live our lives by the moment, an hour at a time, but decades, generations, and centuries measure a family's history. The things we treasure and save out of the every day bric-a-brac of living—the trinkets, photographs, and letters that we pass forward to our children—become an important tangible and visible link to the past once we are gone.

Family scrapbooks are one of the best ways to preserve family history for future generations. For many modern parents, scrapbooking is almost a lost art form. A scrapbook is much more than a semi-organized collection of thoughts and memories—the ritual of building and maintaining the family archives can itself be a rich and rewarding experience for both parents and kids. It becomes an opportunity to talk, reminisce, and explore yesterday's events. Part of our family collection is a tattered scrapbook my grandmother created nearly a century ago. Because she died before my children had a chance to know her, the bits and pieces of her childhood, which she saved, are precious beyond measure. They are the only things that speak to them of a distant generation.