Take a Trip Down Memory Lane (+ a LyveHome Giveaway)

There's an exit off of Rt 30 in York, PA that is literally called "Memory Lane."  Before AJ transferred to Berklee and he was attending school in York, I'd often ride along with him for the day, and every time we passed that exit, I had to chuckle to myself.  I'm sure we've all used the phrase "a trip down memory lane" a million times, but in York, you can actually take a trip down Memory Lane.

Personally...I love taking trips down memory lane (the figurative version, not the real deal).  We have bins of old photos from my childhood sitting in my mom's closet and I love pulling them out and going through them.  But with the onset of the digital age and the fact that we all have a camera in our pockets now, I definitely don't have nearly as many photos in print.  I love getting my iPhone photos printed from time to time, but I just take way too many photos to print them all!  So, they're all cataloged digitally and that means I rarely go through them.

However, I was recently skimming through my photos on a new app that I downloaded, and I found two that made my heart smile.  Since so many of you have joined the HTB community within the past year, and weren't around when AJ and I first started dating, I thought I'd take you on a trip with me down memory lane and tell you about two little trips from early on in our relationship.

AJ and I started dating in February of 2012 and in May of that year, his family went to Disney for a week.  My dad works for USAir, and at the time, I still had my flight privileges, which meant that I flew for free.  One day I was joking with AJ's mom that I would just crash their vacation because of my flight situation.  She joked back that I definitely should...at least I thought she was joking until I got a text from her the next day telling me I actually should fly down for a few days.

AJ's sister, Amanda, happens to be dating my cousin, Zac, so he and I devised a plan to fly to Orlando and surprise them.  We booked a hotel room at the resort where they were staying (which ended up being the adjoining room to theirs, because Disney is wonderful and magical), booked our flights, and kept everything hush hush, except from AJ's mom.  Then, on Tuesday of the week of their vacation, we hopped on a flight and headed to Florida.

We ended up sneaking up on them in the middle of Animal Kingdom and surprising them, and then spent 3 days hanging out in Disney with their family.  It was the best little vacation, and will always be a memory that we cherish!

The second photo that I found was this one, which was taken in Fells Point in Baltimore during the first fall that AJ and I were dating.  We had taken a day trip down to Baltimore to see Mutemath in concert along with Mark, Natalie, and their friend, John.  Mutemath is AJ's favorite band, so for his birthday the month before, I had gifted him an hour-long guitar lesson with their bassist (#BestGirlfriendEver).  So we decided to spend the day in Baltimore, then head over to the venue a little early for AJ's lesson and then enjoy the concert that evening.

I love this particular photo because it was taken over two and a half years ago and is literally one of like five photos of us that wasn't taken with an iPhone (hurry up, engagement shoot...we need you!).  I also love it because it reminds me of all that the first year of a relationship holds...at this point, we were in love and we were comfortable with one another, and we even had both known for months that we wanted to get married, but there was still so much to learn about each other!  Plus, I had those bangs, which I may or may not be considering getting again this fall after the wedding and everything.

I don't know about you, but I get overwhelmed by the massive catalog of digital photos that I have between my phone, computer, and iPad.  It's hard to keep track of all of them and that makes these trips down memory lane less frequent, which is really sad!   After looking for a solution, I settled on the free Lyve app (available for desktop, iOS, and Android), which seamlessly brings together all of the photos on all of your devices, regardless of available storage space.

Lyve's beautiful and easy-to-navigate user face is the perfect answer to all of my photo-cataloging problems.   It organizes your photos by date (so it's super easy to search and sift through them), and it continuously updates and syncs photos so that your entire photo library is available to you no matter where you are!  And, you can easily share photos right from the app to Twitter and Facebook, or through a message or email!

The coolest feature is the "Moments Past" function.  Moments Past is featured front and center to the app's home screen and pulls up photos from a specific day, week, or month from years past.  The Moments Past feature is sure to conjure up lots of memories, just like it did for me with the two photos above!

And here's the awesome news....Lyve wants to give away a LyveHome device to one lucky HTB reader!  The LyveHome device is a 2TB smart storage drive that securely and safely backs up all of your photos and videos and automatically syncs new photos that you take with your phone, tablet, or other device!  You can delete photos from your phone, and they'll still be safe and sound on your LyveHome storage device!

Here's how to enter:

1.  Download the Lyve app for your phone or tablet (iOS here or Android here)
2.  Find a photo that evokes an emotional memory of friends and/or family
3.  Come back here and share your feelings about the photo/app in the comments below

*Please note that all entries will be verified by Lyve so play fair!  Contest closes May 19, 2020.   Winner will be notified via blog comment & email and will have 1 week to claim their prize.  If prize is not claimed in this time, a new winner will be chosen.

HAVE YOU DOWNLOADED LYVE?  WHAT MEMORIES HAVE YOU DISCOVERED ON YOUR TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE?