Digital Memories??

Okay, so I have taken up digital scrapbooking and I LOVE IT!!! I think that it makes alot of sense. I mean all of my pictures are taken digitally, and stored on my computer, so why wouldn't I love to simply scrapbook on my computer? The other cool thing about it is that if I just have 10 minutes here or there, I can scrapbook because all I need to get out is my computer and not all of my scrapbooking crap!! It is also wayyyyy easier to clean up one laptop than it is to clean up all of my other scrapbooking tools. Don't get me wrong, I love to scrapbook, but this digital scrapbooking stuff is soooo cool. And the best part is that when I am done, my work is printed out into a storybook that is sewn together. So that way I don't have to worry about people wrecking my photos!!
So, because I have been doing alot of digital scrapbooking, I have been thinking about all of my digital photos. I have Adobe Elements 6 which I can use to take a picture and turn it into basically anything I want to!! While this is fun to do sometimes, it has made me wonder. Have digital pictures skewed the way we remember our own memories?? I mean if I take a picture of myself and I have a hair sticking out, or my hand is in a funny position, or I am not looking at the camera, I can edit my photo to be perfect. If I take a family photo and Dustin has a black eye, or Anne has a cut beside her eye, or Caroline is not looking at the camera, it is not a problem because I can edit those things out of my pictures. These things seem like good ideas at the time, but then when I look back at my photos am I losing a part of my memories? I mean, if I see Dustin's black eye, I can laugh to myself because I know that he got that from tripping on the stairs right before we were to go to church. Or Anne's cut that she got when she was jumping from one bed to another in her bedroom and we had to take her to the hospital to get it stitched up while I was in early labor with Dustin. And then there is my sweet Caroline who ALWAYS has to do the opposite of what you tell her when you are trying to take photos. If I edit these things out of my photos, I am missing the little stories that make up my kiddies childhood.
I can't tell you how many times I hear, "Oh well, it's okay that I look terrible in this picture, I'll just photoshop that out." Now, wouldn't we all love to have perfect hair days all of the time, and clothes without any wrinkles, and to be 20 lbs lighter. But in my life, that is not the reality, and so to tell you the truth, I don't use photoshop that often for anything other than photo effects because I don't want to look back on my photos and think that I always looked perfect back then, and then get depressed because I can't look that way now!
Maybe I am just being silly, or maybe not, but in my life bad hair days, uncooperative children and bumps and bruises are part of my everyday life. And even though I know that they sometimes irk me to no end, there will be one day when I won't have that any more and I will want to look back on my pictures and have those little memories!