I used to watch them more often, but I find the last few years they make me wistful. I do enjoy it more on the occasions I get them out with the kids, because we just laugh and laugh.
But I made the mistake of getting one out today from Xmas 1998. Much happier times with small children, beloved family members were still alive (young and old), estrangements hadn’t taken place yet. It made me so sad.
The only highlight were the all the kids comments about my lasagne, my 2 year old sitting by himself at the kitchen table bopping to the music as he watched everyone do whatever. (He’s still a watcher), and my aunt and sister doing the jitterbug in the kitchen. Aunt is now dead, and I haven’t spoken to my sister in 5 years.
So, I guess Xmas dvds shouldn’t be watched at Xmas time? I don’t know.
We just watched a bunch of old moves right before Thanksgiving. We were looking for our DD’s old dance recital videos from when she was an itty bitty. Instead we found MIL’s last xmas. We weren’t emotionally prepared and it was really jarring. I told DH he needed to do a better job of labeling the videos!
@CTmom2018 …yes, you need to do that! I only have one copy and need to copy them to my PC and make more. I still have all my old cassettes in a box, about 50 of them. I’m too afraid to get rid of them now, even though we don’t have a vhs player.
I can barely stand to look at the photos of the kids when they were little. I miss them like that so much. “Toyland, toyland, dear little girl and boy land. Once you cross its borders you can never return again”.
Many of my videos are on miniDV cassettes and I made promises recently to convert them through the computer, onto DVD. If I have any luck with that I’ll share. I have to admit, I’m afraid to go toying around with different cord, ports and such, but it really must be done.
I need to get my mini dv and other little tapes converted too. That was on my to do list this year and got away from me.
I also get wistful watching the old movies now. Many people have passed on, and with the kids basically grown and gone (youngest a junior and unlikely to live here again), it’s a little painful. I loved having the kids here. I don’t think I fully realized at the time how brief those joyous years would be.
Spent time last winter digitizing VHS, 8 mm video, and MiniDV. VHS had deteriorating the worst–thankfully, youtube had great tutorials on repairing/splicing VHS tapes.
For our 25th wedding anniversary, DH surprised me by having our wedding video converted from VHS to digital.
We had last looked at it on our 10th anniversary. I still can’t believe I fit into that dress!
DD asked us it made us sad to see my grandmother, father, and in-laws, who have passed away. I was a little choked up, but DH answered her perfectly, saying “Maybe a little bit, but when we look around and see how happy everyone was for us, its hard to be sad.”
As for the VHS tapes when the pups were little, we seemed to have many more hours of them from when our first was born, and not nearly as many for the younger.
I purchased a package called Elgato video capture from amazon.com. It provided the necessary software and hardware to hook up a VCR or camcorder to upload and convert the video. There may be cheaper products, but this one had very good reviews. I think it cost around $80 USD.
I then used Windows moviemaker to chop up each ~1-2 hr video into smaller files and saved them in folders by year.
Took a bit of time, but being retired it filled a few cold winter days and I was shocked at the deterioration of 30 yr old VHS tapes. Glad I preserved the video. Gave each of my kids a flash drive with videos of their childhood. Maybe they’ll look at them someday.
@MADAd: Thst sounds great. I have some hardware for insertion into an older pc, an Expresscard, which allows for computer capture, but I’ve simply not found myself up to even trying it.
@conmama Sorry to hear you and your sister have not spoken in five years. Is it possible you could still reconnect? Start off with something as simple as , I was looking at old videos and thought of you?
I miss my kids being little so much. I try to remember those were hard years. I guess I’m relieved? to see others think it’s difficult seeing the old pics/videos too.
We haven’t watched them in a long time and now I’m going to feel the need to find them, as we’ve moved twice. H did buy some machine and convert the VHS tapes to CD about 10 years ago. Now I read they’ll disintegrate, too.
We had an amazing tape of oldest son’s birth made by a friend who did film-making semi-professionally. It was a textbook Lamaze delivery. We watched it every year on his birthday until he was about 10 - alone, not with the kids, but haven’t seen it since. The only other video I ever look at is D at age 6 performing “My Heart will go on” at a local talent show.
@sevmom , the thing is she was never very good to me, so for my mental well-being I have no desire to reconnect. The only collateral damage are the cousins. But they are old enough to reconnect on their own. My one DS tried once with no success.
We bought a number of video cameras but were never great at filming or keeping the videos. But one of the many cameras was bought one Saturday morning. That afternoon our six year old came into the house to ask her father to remove her training wheels. He went out with wrench and removed them. He had the camera in his pocket and got her figuring out the last bit of figuring out the two wheel balance. Best part of the video was when she lifted the lid off the outdoor trash can and tossed the training wheels in, looking up, huge smile of accomplishment. I love watching that video every now and then. I see that same girl now as she keeps accomplishing things.