hold the pepperoni

I recently read an article, linked through facebook, about making memories. The gist of the article was to focus on everyday, or less intentional, family memories, rather than just large-production memories. In our hurried, consumer-driven lives, with everyone striving for bigger-better-more, it is easy to fall into the trap of overlooking opportunities to build simple memories, because we have come to think that we can only build memories through major productions, such as...

Hey, let's take a home equity loan and fly the family to Disney World for a month!

Or...

I'm going to plan an unforgettable Frozen birthday party with a scale model of Elsa's ice palace sculpted in the backyard!  

In reality, though, sometimes the best memories are the simplest ones. Although I've learned that packing up kids to do much of anything is not "simple", many of my fondest childhood memories are of fairly simple stuff (as opposed to over-the-top home-refinancing vacations).

The post assumed, of course, everyday positive memories. It is a good reminder and challenge to us all.

BUT...

That got me thinking in a completely different direction on the topic of building memories.

The reality of memories is that we ARE building everyday memories with our families... EVERY DAY! (Whether we are trying, or not). 

But, what kind of memories are we building? 

Memories don't just come in the warm, fuzzy, positive variety.  Nope, there are many negative memories and they are pretty permanent and easy to build. Say, for example, hypothetically, of course, that years ago a guy was arguing with his wife and, in anger, threw a piece of pizza across the table at her... a couple sons may still remember the "pizza fight".  Yep... making memories... (don't ask me how I know!)

So, the moral of the story is that I'm constantly making memories of some kind with my family.  Some good.  Some not so good. (Hey, I am human!)  But, I want to challenge myself to live so that there are plenty of good memories to offset occasional things like the "pizza fight"... I mean, hypothetically, of course... if there were a pizza fight...