Family Pictures

It's snowing (yuck).  The groceries are done, bills are paid, and my kids have no activities or birthday parties today. 

So we are not leaving the house.

It is a great pleasure for me to stay home for a day.  The weeks are busy with work and other commitments, and often the weekends are time to catch up on everything that does not get done during the week.  But yesterday, I braved the lineups in the stores and got all my running around done so that I could enjoy my Saturday at home.

One of the things I picked up yesterday was a couple of pretty new photo albums.  One of the other things about film (see post below) that I miss is that I used to send them off immediately, pick up the prints, and place them in albums as they came in.  With digital photography, though, they spend much too long in the waiting room of my computer. 

My goal for today is to organize about 200 of them into albums, then send more off to be printed.  These are the family photos, Christmas and summer, camping and playing at the beach.  While I couldn't do without my artistic photography, these are the ones that truly matter.  They are a record of my children's lives, carrying with them joyful memories of time sweet and short.  They are family and friends, who we are and who we were.  Most of all, they are reminders of how lucky I am, how full my life is and has been.

And I am looking forward to giving them a proper home.

Time Flies

A couple of nights ago I dug out some old photo albums. It had been awhile since I'd taken the time to look through the kids' baby pictures. My son, my daughter, and I curled up on the couch with these memories on our laps. Even though I know time flies, and I feel every day how fleeting their childhood is, I was amazed at how quickly they've grown. The baby faces have turned into child faces, their eyes a little more knowing and their bodies growing.

My children were keen to talk about the things they remembered, and hear stories about the ones they didn't. The pictures speak of moments of laughter and love, smiling faces and silly ones too. Firsts: First Christmas, Halloween costumes, visits to the beach.

We will add to these albums as they grow; as time moves on, we will continue to run for the camera to captures those moments.

So we can remember,
together.