In our daughter’s junior year of high school, we began the college tour process. For her, it became an overwhelming time of fitting in travel to at least half a dozen campuses in the Northeast from Boston to North Carolina, while balancing an aggressive academic schedule, work, and dance. For my husband and I, it became a time of realizing our parental role was changing. Our “baby” might live hundreds of miles away for most of the year. There would be birthdays and holidays she would not be with us. I wouldn’t be running out at the eleventh hour for school supplies or sewing the ribbons on her pointe shoes the night before a show. What a shame it would be to lose all those feelings of excitement and uncertainty.

That’s when I decided to journal through the college tour process. I always have a notebook with me when I travel, so we would talk while touring and I captured some of those memories in a journal. My husband and I took photos as well. I am thinking a collection of those photo memories and journal entries would make a nice keepsake for her–and us–to look back on.

Do you like to journal? Have you ever journaled through an experience? Do you keep a photo journal?

“For everything there is a season, A time for every activity under heaven.” – Ecclesiastes 3:1-8