hello. my name is jami nato. i love Jesus. i'm married and have some babies. i craft a lot, so sue me.

this is my my family. we wear 50's clothes everyday. ok, that's a lie...we wear them every other day.

i was at an antique mall the other day and came across a bunch of great old pictures from the 40's and 50's. i wanted to buy them all just because of their vintage outfits and old cars. of course i didn't. what am i going to do with other people's memories?

and then i became a little sad. i wondered where these pictures belonged. certainly not strewn about in a bowl at an antique mall. instead of a passersby saying, look at that lady's awesome hair-do and her old school car. the story behind it could be, look at aunt betty and her brand new chevy...that i threw up in after riding the ferris wheel. i never ate cotton candy from that day on and she never let me ride in that car again...

memories up for grabs. little bits of history and stories carelessly tossed about.

i'm really big into encouraging (perhaps bullying) people to create blogs and write on them regularly. i mean, if you scrapbook your heart out, this is awesome too, just more expensive and time consuming. i encourage this to foster a deeper idea in the hearts of mothers, which is being a good steward of your families memories. whether you think your life is boring or not, it doesn't matter. wouldn't you have loved to know what your mother's day looked like when you were little? what were we doing together?

what was she cooking? what was she wearing? what was i doing that made her laugh? what were her struggles and how did she work through them? what did she value? why was she jumping off the couch?

as a mother, these stories get lost from one day to the next. i look at old posts and think, i don't even remember any of that happening...i'm so glad i wrote it down. and the pictures sometimes speak for themselves.

when these stories are posted on a blog or written down, they become little bits of your life stuck in time. priceless memories for generations to come. don't let your stories get lost in the day to day craziness. we all are busy with something. but we make time for things that are important.

i get asked all the time, how do you have time to blog? well, i don't. i make time. like with anything...reading your bible, date nights, doing something creative, jumping on the bed...you make time for what you value. as mothers, let us start valuing the telling of our family story.

otherwise, they'll end up lost. or in a bowl at an antique shop. tattered and discarded. lost stories belonging to someone.

i say, no more lost stories.