Thankful Thursday: Memories

I’m Thankful for memories.  (Especially FUNNY ones.)  

I've read that the strongest memories are attached to an emotion, scent or sound:
  
A favorite song, the sound of dog tags jingling on a collar.   The smell pumpkin bread in the fall.  
The fragrance of a baby product that pulls you back to when you used it on your own children.  
The smell of leather and hay when you walk into a stable.  

Not all memories are good, many are tough....but thankfully, our mind clouds over those memories we want to forget and year after year, slowly fades them.  Some memories can make us laugh like crazy.  To us, they are hysterical.  To someone else, it has no meaning.  Your memory is a very personal thing.  

With this year coming to a close, I look back on those precious to me that are now forever relegated to being "remembered."  I can't make new memories with them ever again.

My parents won't make new memories with me any longer.  Our 2 sweet dogs won't either. Even our son in some ways....  Now that he is in college, most of his memories from now on will not include us.  (Some I'm sure I don't WANT to know!)  

I guess what I'm trying to say is that to me, memories are really precious.  I can't tell you how hard I laugh when recalling how my sister Sheri and I went into a chocolate feeding frenzy one Thanksgiving!  Or when I saw my other sister Page whacking her dog with a dead chicken because he kept killing them.  (He never did THAT again!)  Or my brother who learned the hard way what happens when seagulls go into a feeding frenzy.   Then my kids.....Matt, at the ripe old age of 4, told a cashier she had "rat teeth" and Kaela had an unfortunate sneezing incident in a fast food bathroom while we were traveling.   OH.MY.GOSH.  

These are the things that I remember and cherish.  Good times.  I am so Thankful for the memories.  I hope and pray that I get to keep them for a long, long time......