Too Many Photos

This is a picture taken at my wedding reception over 13 years ago. It's a shot of me (yes folks, that really is me) with my mother and my maternal grandmother, Elsie Godfrey Welling.

This is a four generation photo we took 6 years later on the front porch of gma's house. I'm holding Taylor who wasn't quite 3 years old at the time.

My family and I are driving up to Utah today. Tomorrow, August 1st, is Grandma Welling's 90th birthday and we are gathering together at This is the Place Heritage Park in Salt Lake to celebrate with her.

Each of us were asked to send in any photos we had of Grandma to be used in a video presentation. The above two photos were ones that instantly came to my mind as pictures I wanted to share. As I sat down a few nights ago with some photo albums and boxes of pictures to look through I thought, "I'm sure I have quite a few pictures of grandma that I can send in for the slide show." After searching through everything I had, guess how many pictures I found with grandma in them? No, not hundreds or even dozens. I only found fifteen pictures. Fifteen!! I couldn't believe that's all I had. I'm sure there are other pictures out there floating around somewhere - but in my personal collection I have a measly fifteen pictures of my grandma. So sad...

I was heartbroken as I flipped through my family photos and realized I only had a handful with other loved ones too, like my Grandpa and Grandma Watts - both who have passed away. In the past, whenever we would be at some family gathering, I would take a picture or two if I could - but most of the time I either forgot my camera or was too consumed with chasing kids around to worry about snapping pictures. No biggie, I always thought. I'm sure I can get copies of pictures from somebody else later. Well, we know how often that happens. Those moments are long gone and I have my memories, but those fade. A picture can last forever. I learned a valuable lesson as I sat there in my den looking through old boxes - you can never have too many photos.

So I have made a pact with myself: from now on I will make a more conscious effort to bring my camera with me and not only take more pictures of family and loved ones, but make sure I take pictures of my kids with their relatives - especially the ones we don't get a chance to see very often. This Saturday is the perfect opportunity to start - it will be the first time I've seen most of these people in awhile, so my camera will be charged and ready and I'm going to snap away.

The first shot I'm going to take: a picture of my sweet Grandma Welling with my four adorable children...