Billy Goats on a Leash & Shower Poof Prom Dresses: My Life in a Legacybox

My mama has been videotaping me since the day I was born. She’s always been a documenter, scrapbooker, life-bio-keeper.  That’s how she rolls.

She was blogging when blogging wasn’t cool.

Seriously, here is a soundless video of my parents holding me as a newborn baby in the hospital, in all my 10 lb, 6 ounce glory. Yes, I was a giant newborn.

I added a little muzak to spice it up a bit.

YOU GUYS!! HOW COOL IS THAT???? Almost 40 year old footage from my birth in 1977 that’s now sitting on Youtube??

Aughhh I love it!

Throughout my entire childhood we owned some type of movie camera-whether it was an old 8mm film camera or a VHS video camera-I don’t remember a single time in my life when I wasn’t being recorded by my mother. Birthdays, first dates, proms, graduations… it’s all somewhere on tape in my mom’s house.

She was like the Adam Goldberg of Alabama.

At some point in the mid-80’s she set up the old 8mm movie projector and projected home movies onto the side of the giant deep freezer in granny’s kitchen while she recorded each one by hand with her giant VHS video recorder. So, in this next video you get to hear the actual slap-slap-slap of the 8mm movie reel as a bonus sound effect.

If you had any doubt when I told you we lived like pioneer people as a child, this is video evidence of my rural upbringing.

Those goats I’m chasing? Real deal, folks! (and how do you like my sweet little country accent??)

I’ll skip over all the birthday parties and vacation videos to take you straight to my Senior Prom, 1995. I was giving my mother some a serious eye-roll and side-eye while I was getting ready for my prom.

But, let me state for the record, that 39 year old Beth is VERY thankful that 17 year old Beth’s mama made her spin around and show off her prom dress, even if the sleeves did look just like shower poofs.

After mom’s open heart surgery, I decided it was time to get all of those memories off the outdated VHS tapes hidden on a dusty bookshelf and get them digitally preserved.  This is one of those things I had been wanting to do for years, but just hadn’t gotten around to it.  But, going through mom’s heart-wrenching ordeal made me realize that life is too short to put off the things that we need to do today.

SO, I SAT DOWN AND ORDERED MYSELF A LEGACYBOX.

Legacybox is simple. They mail you a box that you fill with any formats in your home movie/photo collection–VHS, 8mm, photos, slides, you name it.

Then you mail it back to them, pre-paid in the original box.

They take all your memories and put them onto a USB drive for your computer and DVD’s so you can watch them on your DVD player just like a regular movie.  It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.

When the box came, I filled it with old school VHS tapes and those mini-versions that came out in the 90’s.

Then I realized that I needed to add the barcode stickers that came with my package, so I took them all out and barcoded each one.

Then I realized I should try to put them in some semblance of chronological order, so I took half the barcode stickers off and shuffled them around until they were semi-ordered by date.

THEN I went to re-package the box to send back to Legacybox for digitizing, and realized that I had already thrown away the cardboard box that it came in.  Luckily I’m not hurting for cardboard boxes around this joint, so I found a sturdy Young Living box in my garage that fit perfectly.  I also discovered that I don’t have any clear packing tape in my house, so I chose the old redneck stand-by… duct tape.

I sat this box on my front porch and called FEDEX to come pick up my shipment.  It was as easy as that!  They picked it up and I didn’t even have to leave my house.

Thankfully my package made it to Legacybox safely despite my redneck-rigged up packing tape.  Within a day or so, I got an email telling me they had received my videos and my memories were bring processed.

I was kept continually updated via email about where my videos were at every stage of the process, until one day I arrived home to find all of my memories sitting right back on my front porch again.

Except when I opened the box this time, I saw this…

Inside the box, along with my safely returned videotapes, were a neat stack of DVDs PLUS a fancy 64gb USB drive that contains every single minute of tape that I had mailed off to them.

I called my mom, and she came over to sit on my sofa and watch our lives unfold before our eyes.

Lemme tell ya… it’s quite an experience to have old home movies that have been sitting on your shelf for over 25 years come to life right there on your computer and tv screen.

We laughed and we cried, then we laughed some more.

We took screenshots and put them on facebook and made our friends cry. This little girl who was snuggled up on her mama’s chest during a church potluck is now a beautiful grown woman with a child of her own.  She lost her mother to cancer in the mid-90’s, but here they are together… this priceless moment captured in a digital image for her whole family to see again.

Oh man, I’m gonna cry again just thinking about it.

I’m working on uploading a lot of these old family and church videos to Youtube so that I can share them with friends on facebook. There are hours upon hours of footage captured from my childhood all the way up through adulthood.

It’s been an emotional roller coaster seeing all these old family and friends who are no longer with us, but SUCH A GIFT to see them all again and hear their voices loud and clear.

There was also many hours of footage of Days of Our Lives from the 80’s, so if anyone wants to relive the Patch and Kayla days, I’ve got them documented!

It is so important to preserve your memories, and this Legacybox was such an easy way to do it. I didn’t even have to leave my house! Everything came right to my front door. This was such an awesome gift to myself.

Christmas is right around the corner! What an amazing gift it would make for someone else!

CLICK HERE  TO GET YOUR OWN LEGACYBOX! THE FIRST 25 PEOPLE TO USE THE CODE: BOPPY AT CHECKOUT TO RECEIVE 40% OFF YOUR ORDER! OFFER EXPIRES 11/15.

Hurry up and be one of the 25 to get that discount!

This post was sponsored by Legacybox. All opinions about billy goats, shower poof prom dresses and Adam Goldberg are my own.