The Goen’s are always looking for ways to make family memories. I believe memories are gift from God. In times or hardship and heartache great memories are often the things that help us make it through to the other side of our difficult situation.
On December 31, 1999 my family put together a time capsule that contained pictures, tracings of our children’s feet and hands, prices of the day and a letter detailing what our family was involved with at the time. I wish we could take credit for this idea, but in reality we probably read about it in a magazine. We did follow through with the idea though by sealing the tube and writing on the capsule “do not open until 2010.” Our children were 9 months old, 3 years old and 5 years old at the time we assembled our little offering of memories. For the first couple of years our kids begged to open the time capsule around the new year and we would refuse to give in to the desire. My wife eventually put the capsule out of sight and away so we would not run across it often. The whole “out of sight and out of mind” phenomenon took over. In fact we actually forgot about the capsule until our recent move when we ran across it and realized this is the year we get to open our surprise.
All of us had forgotten the articles we inserted into the tube so the opening was accompanied with anticipation. Last week after our Sunday lunch we opened the time capsule and laughed extremely hard at the little objects we carefully shoved into the tube. We remembered old stories about that particular time in our lives and couldn’t believe how time had flown. After a few minutes the kids gathered everything up and started toward the trash can to throw away ten years of memories. Amy and I both yelled “Stop!” The little pieces of paper where full of memories we couldn’t part with as easily as they could.
Our kids are wanting to create another time capsule, but not for ten years from now, maybe three to five years from now. I am thankful this little memory maker has meant something to them like it did for Amy and me. Get started creating memories with your family.
The anticipation…..
Who is this family?
Times have changed…so have prices.
Beautiful drawing of birds…very simple
Family Letter from the time capsule.
