Do You See What I See?

I look at this picture of my little family and I see a mom that was rarely in pictures.  Usually I was taking pictures of the kids because lets face it... they are adorable!  But also. I did not want to be IN any pictures.  I did not like looking at pictures of myself... I still don't!  Even in this picture I am making an effort to hide my fat rolls on my stomach behind my children because no matter how many hours I logged in the gym they just would not go away.  I am also looking at probably the last picture that was taken of the four of us together before that night a few months later that would change everything for us.

You know what I've learned since then?  It's so important to be in pictures even when there are so many fat rolls that they can't possibly be hidden.  When we were gathering pictures for our dad's funerals and you could tell that they were up 20 pounds or down those same 20 pounds, not one person mentioned their weight!  We were all too busy discussing where the picture was taken and what we were talking about before or after the shot was snapped or even what we were laughing about or what he could have been saying when the shutter closed and his mouth was open instead of smiling!  Pictures are just that, tools to help us remember.  I want my kids and future generations to have glimpses of the messy and not just the filtered perfection.  Are you IN pictures?  Are you filtering too much?

"Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still." -Dorothea Lange