I love to capture the moments of my family – the big things, the little things. I think about someday when my children are left with nothing more than photo albums (or blogs in my case) to peruse for glimpses of their childhood – who they were, who my husband and I are, what we loved and what we spent our days doing – I want them to have evidence of it all. From the firsts to the mundane.

This past weekend, on one of our last days of summer, my kids and I spread ourselves out on a picnic blanket, opened up containers of favorite foods and had ourselves a quick little afternoon picnic in the grass. We sat chattering about what we’d do after lunch – kick the soccer ball around, climb the persimmon tree, go back inside to the air conditioning. I sat on the blanket as my son ate his peanut butter sandwich and I pretended to bend over and take big bites from it. He giggled and teased and elbowed me out of the way and we carried on together making each other laugh.

My 7 year old daughter sat across the blanket from us, picked up my camera and took this. I thought little of it until we got home. I loaded the afternoon’s pictures of tree climbing and walking and exploring onto the computer. Then I found this – a moment otherwise forgotten but now forever frozen in time thanks to the camera being there. And now, after a summer of adventures and firsts, one of my favorite pictures from the past two months of summer is one from a quick little impromptu picnic on one of our last lazy days of summer. A moment that instead of being forgotten was captured as beautiful. That’s the thing about pictures – they capture what is and let us see later how beautiful something was while we were living it. And that is why I take my camera everywhere I go.

When I wake in the morning and sit in the still quiet of my living room in the chair next to the tree at 5:45 in the morning, waiting for the kettle to whistle with the water for my coffee, I am reminded under the lights – it’s Christmastime.

When my daughter asks for a small tree just for her to decorate, I say yes. It is, afterall, the Christmas of Yes. We pick a tabletop tree, she chooses a sparkly star for the top and uses lights and ornaments we have to decorate. There is only one candy cane left and I haven’t had one yet.

I haven’t been baking. I finished my shopping. We’ve been living the quiet life, away from the stores and the lines. There isn’t much to share right now except the tiny glimpses of the day to day under the lights that remind me in their gentle way – it’s Christmastime.

Check out the Holiday Bokeh Party at Life With My 3 Boybarians

While our friends and family up north were all busy building snowmen,we ventured to the beach in Miami over the weekend. Without hesitation the moment we arrived, my older one led her younger brother showing him to “sled”. I had to put the santa hats on them. When I think back to the pictures that capture glimpses of moments in time of my brother and I playing together, I have a feeling that this picture will be one of those lifelong keepers for them. “Remember the time we went sledding at the beach?” It was fun, it was beautiful. And it was all about making the most of what we have right here right now.

I’m linking up to Sweet Shot Tuesday at Life With My 3 Boybarians today. Check it out for many gorgeous photos.

This week’s challenge at I Heart Faces is “Smiles”

I snapped this pic of my 5 year old a couple of days ago. She lost her first tooth a couple of weeks ago and I am really loving that part of her smile lately.

Be sure to check out I Heart Faces to see the other entries.

We also have one lonely blueberry blossom

I’ve been told we look alike. Only in seeing our perfectly matched freckled noses smooshed together and our lips forming the same little smirk that says to each other, “I adore you” did I realize just how much.

Absolutely, this is my sweet shot of the week. Check out Darcy’s Sweet Shot Tuesday for more photos.

As time went on, I was deleting photos from my camera before they even reached the computer that I would have been proud of before. I found myself expecting more of myself simply because of what I was holding in my hand. I was deleting pictures just because they weren’t perfectly exposed or composed even if they were priceless shots of the loves of my life.

This is not where I wanted to be as a mother with a camera. This blog didn’t help. The same way there tends to be a level of “good enough” not quite being enough, I felt the same about photos I shared here. Why share a mediocre house project? Why share a mediocre photo? Well, then a standard was set that I couldn’t share something unless it met a level of perfection that isn’t me.

I took this photo yesterday. Nothing special or spectacular. And I had to remind myself that the moment my kids were having matters far more than how perfect the photography is.

I know, much of it is me. I am fairly certain no one is a harsher critic of myself or the things I do than I am. If someone out there is, please keep talking behind my back because I don’t want to hear harsher criticism of myself than my own. Yet I also attribute some of it to this striving for perfection, this need to only display perfectly posed, perfectly staged photos of life and home for the internet. It’s not all as pretty as a picture all the time and we all know that, yet we don’t always show it.

The step stools we just finished a few days ago? The ones we made all shiny and new? Are completely dirty from tiny toes and splashing water. Funny I haven’t taken a picture of that.

I have really bad hair days. But I love my kids and I love the beach. So why delete it?

I met with a friend last week to give her some tips on how to use her new DSLR. More than halfway through, I remembered to mention “you know, it’s okay if a picture isn’t totally perfect”. Sadly, I had to remind myself of that too. Moments go quickly. Sometimes you can’t adjust settings and get it perfect but you can still get it. And that matters. Small moments with bad hair, messy backgrounds, dirty faces, overexposure, underexposure, red eyes, goofy faces – they are all part of this imperfect, messy life we live. And worth sharing.

I should say it has been fun to enjoy a lot of the thrills of winter without any of the hassle. It would be fun for the kids to see some flurries, but a little ice was enough for me today.

What is the weather doing where you are? Hope you are staying toasty warm.

He was scared of the winding path and the noises of nature, so he stuck close to my leg

Then was brave enough to step away from my leg but still wanted to hold my hand, and was a little unsure.

He finally let go and chose a leaf to carry

He loved when we came to forks in the path so he got to choose which way we’d go

There will always be laundry. I won’t always have chances to hold my son’s hand while we walk, then watch him choose to let go to show me the way.