Memories

Oh, guys, I could spend hours and hours looking at old family photos.  Luckily, my mom shares this affinity, and she took a ton of photos of us growing up and has the vast majority organized into albums - you know, Rebecca I, Rebecca II, that kind of thing.  We watch old VHS tapes from my dad's big video camera at Christmas, and whenever we celebrate a birthday, there's always a photo album out - I suspect because my mom was flipping through it earlier in the day.

I love old photos partly because they were often taken before we learned to make appropriate faces for the camera.  I met a friend in college on a spring break camping trip who has a tradition of True Feelings photos - after you take the smiley photo, you're free to take a photo with whatever facial expression is lurking inside you.  Childhood photos are like True Feelings photos, all the time.

Last night, we had a family dinner to celebrate my brother's birthday, and after the meal, we sat down and had a good old time looking through one of his photo albums.  I spent most of this time doubled over laughing.  Take a look at this photo, for example.  While I sit with Grandpa on his chair and jovially show him the Koosh ball I had just gotten for Christmas, my brother is preoccupied with a beverage and a present of his own, which appears to be a really big knife:

the look on his face!

And if I get to show that photo to all of the internet, it's only fair that I show one of my own finer moments.  When I was a kid, my grandparents had a hot tub in their basement.  It was totally awesome and we'd go over once in awhile after dinner to sit in the hot tub, water wings and all.  By the end of the night, my brother and sister and I would be tuckered out and ready for bed.  I guess on this particular night I had reached that stage before anyone else.  Everyone is having a jolly good time, and then there's me in the background in my neon, being a tremendous party pooper:

This is a True Feelings photo for sure.

Happy Monday, right?