“The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do.”
A little trip down memory lane...
Do you ever get lost looking back through pictures? Lost in the flood of memories they bring back, often times of days you may have forgotten about? I look at my kids today, and its hard to believe they were ever anything but the big kids that they are (and I know they're only going to continue to grow!). The days are so long, but looking back at pictures like these, I realize how quickly the years fly by. I love how pictures have the ability to resurrect memories I had forgotten about, to bring me so vividly back to days that I didn't remember. My family often gets frustrated that I'm taking "another picture" - but everyone loves looking back through all of the pictures and I often find them saying "Oh, I remember...!" or "Mom, do you remember when...?" Pictures tell the story of our life, they give the gift of capturing that moment in time and freezing it forever. I love how pictures never change - my girls will forever be little toddlers in these pictures, even though they're full on tweens right now. Looking back through pictures like those temporarily transports me from the chaos that is our current life, back to the precious early years of parenting littles.
I found these pictures this week while I was going back through our old computers looking for a specific photo. I always loved them - they're not the perfect images. They're a little out of focus, the coloring isn't perfect, they're not "magazine ready." This was the first "photo session" I tried with our kids for our Christmas cards back in 2014. Bayley was 4 and Ellie had just turned 2. Jack was just a baby (unfortunately I couldn't find the pictures with him in them). I was so proud of these pictures and they hung on our wall for several years. I think of how much we've all grown and changed since then. These girls are so much bigger now, and there is no way they would let me dress them in complementing dresses and hair bows. But, I will always smile when I look back at these pictures, and remember that cold fall day at the farm when they were so small, their cheeks so rosy and chubby, and their world was so simple and so sweet. I'll go right back to ages 2 and 4, and I will forever be grateful that we took the time to capture that moment forever in a photo, so it can also be forever in my mind and my heart.