Happy Holiday Snaps

I was at my mum’s the other day when the kids found her photo stash. We all enjoyed looking through them, seeing mine and my brother’s childhood laid before us on paper, filled with so many family holidays from our past.

Looking back over our old family photos, so many of them were bad! Blurry, heads missing, poorly positioned, whatever, but we kept them. They are still moments preserved in time. The photos were usually of us at Christmas or away on our annual fortnight caravan holiday. After all, those were the only times Mum and Dad would get the camera out. Oh, how things have changed!

These days we have photos of every possible moment, special or not, because I guess we see every day as special. That’s the beauty of the mobile phone. We can snap away at any given time, take 10 shots of the exact same thing and then choose our favourite, and then we can easily edit it within moments. Within seconds of taking the photo it can be all over social media, but then the moment can be forgotten just as quickly as we move onto the next photo opportunity.

I see that as a problem. A trap that I’ve fallen into way too many times, especially as a blogger. I can be too busy getting the photo of the moment to actually be in the moment.

Because when I think back on my childhood holidays, it’s often the moments that weren’t on camera that I remember most vividly. My brother resting his head in my lap on the journey there as he fell to sleep (yes, I’m definitely old enough to have not been restricted by seat belts as a youth!), the excitement the first time we spotted the sea and the scent of it, the whispered chats my brother and I would have as we enjoyed the novelty of sharing a room, all of us singing along to my dad’s tapes in the car, playing Gin Rummy on rainy days, and the laughter, always lots of laughter.

I want my children to grow up with memories like these staying with them, without needing the photos to tell the whole story, but just to trigger the trips down memory lane.

So I will continue to capture the moments on camera. Of course I will, as they are lovely to look back on and share, but more importantly, I’ll work on creating memorable moments for my children to keep with them.

Holiday memories

Disclosure: Written in collaboration with Expedia

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