Thank you to Yahoo! Mail for sponsoring this post about staying connected. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.

I am most definitely an email girl. And a pack-rat. Added together that means I can show you emails from my Yahoo! mail account dated over a decade ago. It’s like my own personal time capsule all in one neat and safe location. I recently went back to see what I could find and found emails that make me laugh, made me get a bit teary eyed and some that just took me back in time to a place where I had tiny kids in the house and couldn’t wait to share every milestone with everyone I knew.

Using email to keep in touch is so important because my family is scattered across the country. It was a bit like the old saying “teach a dog a new trick” but we were able to get my Dad hooked up with email so I could send him updates on the kids– especially his only granddaughter who was just a baby at the time we brought Dad into the digital age. I did get more than a few emails that simply said, “HOW DO I KEEP THIS PICTURE?”  My immediate response (as is with many geeks) was to lay off the caps lock first. Step by step I showed Dad how to download the pictures I sent to him of the family. From updates on “the baby” to pictures of the boys’ latest Lego creation. It was as if he was there to share in these moments with us and not hundreds of miles away.

Even now, I send him emails with some of my favorite pictures of the kids. Of course, these are more rare in nature as it it much harder to get teens and a tween to stand still long enough for a picture than it was when they were younger.  Yet, for me it is like a time capsule of my children growing up and a wonderful way to share it with their Papa. Without even knowing me or my kids, you could go through my Yahoo! account and see the significant as well as everyday moments of my family’s life over the years. Email is priceless to me! And the ability to share the special moments in my life and the life of my kids is priceless!

This video is the perfect example of what I am talking about. With Yahoo! mail, my family is not  hundreds of miles away. They are simply a click away.