A dear friend recently reminded me of a very important truth: we are the custodians of our children and grandchildren’s memories. That got me to thinking.  How many times do we say to ourselves, “oh I don’t need another picture of me” or in some other way pass off capturing our own life as insignificant?  I know I think this way all the time and yet I would kill for photographs of those insignificant moments in the lives of my grandparents.  After their weddings, couples say that they won’t need photos of the two of them for many years now.  Every year when someone older wins a portrait session through the St. Jude Dream Home Giveaway, they pass it on to their kids or a friend saying that they just don’t need photos of themselves. Maybe you don’t need more photos of yourself but those photos are not for you. That is the important thing that we all need to remember.

Taking it one step further, here is my biggest conviction from that conversation (can you relate?): we are so careful to back up and re-back up our clients images, but not our own. They’re on our computers here at our house and if someone were to break in and steal those computers, or if a fire claimed our office, all of our personal photos would be gone.  I’m working on changing that right now as we move a copy of all our personal images off-site to be stored with our client images.  This is so important!  If you don’t have a company for off-site storage, at least burn a dvd of your images and take them to a family member’s house.  You just never know and we are the custodians of our children and grandchildren’s memories.  It’s time that we take that to heart.

As our files from the last several years begin their move to off-site locations, here are the most recent images we’ve taken for our children and grandchildren.  I hadn’t really planned to do much with this stage in our life.  After all, I was just pregnant and we know what that looks like.  I don’t really feel like I need another picture of me in this state, but this is for our son and his children, so that they can glimpse back into this insignificant moment in our life and hopefully know us a little better for it.

They’ll know a little better just how much we loved him before he was even born and how much we anticipated his arrival into our lives…

They’ll remember how much new gadgets, like a new remote shutter trigger, fascinate Sean and how funny he can be. :0)

They’ll see how I humored him and those gadgets…

…until I didn’t ;0)

They’ll glimpse the younger selves of their elders, who we are as a couple, and hopefully still see some of this in us all those years later.

Most importantly, we hope that they’ll see love and remember us for it.

We are the custodians of our children and grandchildren’s memories – of their heritage.  No matter how insignificant our life’s moments may seem to us, I plan to move forward both documenting it and preserving it well.  We hope you’ll do the same.