Day 10 : How to Not Forget : Part 3

This is a series within a series, if you will. From today until Sunday, I'll share some tips on how not to forget. Please feel free to share your own tips in the comments below.

I take pictures almost every single day. With smart phone cameras being incredibly high quality, it's kinda crazy not to.

I have thousands of pictures stacked in iPhoto, ready for perusal with the click of a button. The earliest photos on my computer actually date back to October 10, 2008 - six years ago today - the day of our wedding rehearsal.

Pictures of family, friends, houses, students, classrooms, restaurants, beaches, cities - all sitting in one place. As I recently scrolled through the pictures, I noticed (not surprisingly) how very few of these pictures include me and my husband. Not many individually and far fewer of us together.

There are a few honeymoon selfies on the beach, one or two from vacations, and some from weddings or church when we were dressed up. It's always bothered me, but I've never made an effort to make sure we get our picture taken together.

We are far from the days of church directory pictures by Olin Mills - where no one looks comfortable or happy. One such picture from when I was a child has us in front of a back drop of a large book case. Like my whole family just decided to up and go to the library to have our picture made together. It's actually one of my favorite pictures from my childhood, but only because of the people in it. It doesn't really tell a story about who we are.

That's me - the blondie in the back. Dad is holding me.
Mom is in the purple sweater and my sister, Anna, is the cutie in pink overalls.
This is my Dad's side of the family...before everyone started procreating like crazy.

I love taking pictures of my kids and of other things I enjoy. Photographs help us to not forget some of the moments in our lives, great and small. 

The pastor at our church often says that if you want to know what you love most, just look at your checkbook or, for people like us who don't have checkbooks, your Mint app. I would say that the same holds mostly true for our photographs. What is it that is capturing your eye so intensely that you think, "I need to have a picture of this because I don't want to forget it"?

If only my pictures were telling my story, the things I love most in this life are my children, my children with my family, what I eat, and my students. And all of these things are good things to value. But it's missing the top two things I love in this life.

1 - My husband and spending time with him

2 - My kids and spending time with them

I don't have many pictures of these things and it makes me sad. I can't go back and recreate moments so that I can capture it with my camera. Therefore, if I want to remember, I have to remember often {more on that later}. 

I don't want my kids - or myself - to forget that their parents were involved and interested in being and doing things with them. I didn't just watch you paint...I painted with you. 

I want my pictures to show how completely crazy I am about my husband and how happy I am to be with him. 

I'm not a huge fan of having my picture taken {mainly because my eyes usually are half-closed or there's a weird double chin thing going on}, so I don't often put myself in front of the camera. But for the sake of my future self and my posterity, I am going to make sure there are pictures of me with my kids and me with my husband because that is what I truly enjoy and love most in this life. 

Tonight, in an unprecedented move and as a complete shock to Lyle, I asked our waitress to take a picture of us. It was our first date in a loooooooong time and it was celebrating six years of marriage. Of course we need a picture of this. 

You know what? It wasn't weird at all. As she snapped our picture, I explained that we only have a handful of pictures together and I'd like to have more. She chimed in with her own similar story, saying that she wishes she had more pictures of herself with her sisters. {I'd like more of that, too.} All it took was one question and two clicks to get a picture that will help me to not forget a very happy evening with my husband.

Ask people to take your picture. They really don't mind. 

Also, take pictures of yourself and/or your spouse with your kids. Even if it means taking an unselfish-selfie {I LOVE THIS}. It's good for your kids to see themselves with you - as part of a family, rather than always the star of the show. 

Like this one...at 9:00 on a Saturday morning in January...
when we all were wishing we'd had more sleep.
Who doesn't want to remember that!?

How do we not forget? We make sure our photographs accurately tell the stories of our lives - in case we don't get to.

How do you get pictures of yourself, your spouse, your kids, and ALL of you together? Really...I'd like to know!

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This is the tenth post in the series 31 Days of Not Forgetting.

If you'd like to read previous posts in the series, click here and scroll to the bottom.