VHS Induced Nostalgia, Giggles, and NearTears.

(The way we were)

A few weeks ago, I decided to get serious about converting our old family video tapes to digital.



I explored purchasing the equipment to convert these analog tapes to digital, but in the end, I decided to use an online service called Imemories.







Now, all I had to do was find those old VHS tapes. They were here somewhere. I began looking in all the sensible places, but of course, they were not there.



Finally, I found them deep in my own closet, buried under layers of ... stuff that really belongs somewhere else.







After I found them, I realized we had nothing to view them with anymore. The last combo VHS/DVD tape deck we had died last year.







Uh oh.







Then, inspiration hit, as it sometimes does, even for me. In my storage closet (again with the closet) at school, I had an old VHS player just collecting dust.







I checked it out and brought it home the next day.



So, this last week has found us reviewing tapes that go all the way back to 1986, to see just what the heck is on them AND to make editorial decisions.







I have watched my babies crawling and toddling, sleeping, laughing ... so much laughing, crying, playing, singing, acting, and growing in 2 hour increments.







I watched our legendary chocolate labrador, Ranger, being poked by babies, stepped on by babies, crawled upon by babies, hair pulled by babies, ... and never a growl or any sign of anything but contentment. I watched him steal Katie's first birthday cake off the table as we focused on her, saw him leap atop a 5 foot tall garden workbench from a standing start, and later hobble around the yard with aging hips and a grey beard.



I can't watch him without a smile on my face, a lump in my throat, and a tear pushing at the duct release lever.



I am forever grateful to him for being such a good boy with my babies. He was here first and dogs don't always make the new baby transition with grace.



Ranger did.







So much time compressed into a box of tapes. So many hairstyle changes, hair color changes, glasses style changes, short shorts (yes, mine), and changes here at PFHQ too.







The earliest tapes show our tiny singlewide trailer, before we built the house. The land is much more open since it had cows on it until the title transfer.

Once the cows left, the forest went in to overdrive.

It's pretty incredible to see how much the forest has encroached and how incredibly fast the trees have grown UP,UP,UP around us.











Later tapes show a new house, shiny, with no kid or dog damage yet, ... and not much furniture to speak of.

Some of these are only for us of course, but some need to be shared with y'all and they will be once the digitizin' is done.

This week, I have an update on Dave and Tami's log home progress, a trip to Manatee Springs this morning, a little more on Datil peppers, and whatever critters come my way today.

Keep your fingers crossed for my undefeated JV academic nerd team and think of us on Tuesday around 3:30 pm.

We will be going up against the only other undefeated team in our district and they have a human computer kid who could sit up there by himself and defeat most teams.

Last game of the season and it's a battle to see who will have the district's perfect 7-0 season record.

I'm rooting for us.