A Fall Photo Shoot

Yesterday, I remembered (more like found out while talking to other school moms) that Marie had a day off of school today. [Note to self--look at calendar]. 

So in typical fashion, I put off my intended Friday house cleaning routine until the afternoon in lieu of something a little more entertaining. I had wanted to take some family pictures as one of my birthday list goals, because getting professional photos is a difficult task for us. And not just because it's inherently difficult for any family with young kids, but because it's also a huge anxiety trigger for some family members when any non-family member tries to take a picture. Anyway, it ended up being a little too much to squeeze family photos into all the busy-ness happening between the last two weeks of family birthdays, so I decided today was the perfect day to at least get some shots of the kids with the "good" camera.

Not only a mansion...a mansion with one of the best views in town!

We headed to one of our favorite photo shoot back drops (which we also used for our last real family photo shoot), the Highlands Ranch mansion. With the promise of Chick-Fil-A and playground time right around the corner, they mostly cooperated and we got some great shots! Here are the running favorites:

Photographer in training: Marie asked if she could try to take a picture of me, too--so I gave her a quick first lesson in point and shoot with the real camera. With a little cropping and straightening, I'd say her first picture turned out pretty well! 

Rather Downton-esque, don't you think?

Peek-a-boo!

In case you're wondering, that stick on the step wasn't mere coincidence--Ethan was a fireman and that was his firehose (alternately a rocket) that went everywhere with him. And apparently it snuck into this picture with him too!

It was a pretty bright day, and I'm certainly no professional photographer, but I was still surprised to see so much bokeh in many of the pictures when I went back through the images. It took me a little while to realize that all of the fancy lighting effects were probably courtesy of my sequined tank top! 

Something to avoid in the future, I suppose. The more you know...

It was difficult to get the boys to both look at the camera at the same time; Erik's attention span lasted for about two rapid-fire shots, and Ethan was usually cheesing loudly at a bird or airplane or something far more interesting than me, but I thought that overall, they turned out pretty well for an impromptu shoot. 

I'm happy to have some shots that are worthy replacements of those currently on the gallery wall that are over a year old. In comparison, these ones highlight just how quickly they are growing which of course tugs at my mama heart...but I'm glad for the chance today to capture it! 

**All images are (c) Megan Hjelmstad and may not be copied or used without express permission from the owner.**

Remember When...

We had some shabby luck a few weeks ago; my barely-one-year-old computer crashed and burned... and of course it had just surpassed its warranty (verdict is still out on the cause but possibly a virus or some phantom liquid that damaged the hard drive). I had been backing up files at the time, and for a few days we thought we'd also lost our external hard drive; the media folder seemed to be corrupted and emptied of all files, including every single digital picture and video from the last twelve years. All 116,000 of them. I felt physically ill just thinking about all that was gone.

Blessedly, after some diagnostic scans, the external hard drive started working again and I had a day-long party when I saw that our pictures and videos--all of them!--were safe! We've since installed a personal cloud (basically a wireless external hard drive) that connects directly to our router, so it never has to be plugged into a computer that could potentially kill it. It's a backup for our backup hard drive, and we can also wirelessly transfer and back up anything from our phone or computers too. Hooray for redundancy! Sadly, we still lost everything on my computer from the last year, and the machine itself that I so painstakingly researched and picked out is now officially a brick. A nearly new, sleek, worthless brick. Technology these days...can't live with it, can't live without it.

Anyway, there was an upside to all of this: re-discovering all sorts of memories in the process. After our the external hard drive came back to life, I spent time I never would have otherwise going through tons of pictures and videos--so many that I'd already forgotten about!

I got to re-live some obscure college memories:

My roommate and I at a football game (we'll get to make more memories soon at her wedding)!
and another cheerleader who's been my roommate for almost 7 years now.
Yes, it was Halloween, and yes, that says "NAVY."

Beach vacation with family during a summer break,
summer training flying around in helicopters (in a borrowed helmet
that was wayyy to big!), Army diving, and getting our class rings.

I went through more than 700 of our digital wedding pictures, enjoying so many of the candid shots that I never shared on social media or had printed for our album.

During the consecration, praying the Our Father with the maid of honor/best man, and during the Ave Maria.

With my grandmother, attacking cutting the cake (thanks Peter), and oh, the Macarena.

I watched videos I didn't even remember existed (and honestly don't think I've ever seen before) of Marie on the warming table when she was only a few hours old, and videos that Peter made before he deployed for Marie to watch as she grew--I only cried a small river watching those ones. Screenshots below (because editing ancient video files is complicated these days).

Be still my heart.

And then there was the picture I found of us at my parents' house during Christmas of 2008. We were both scheduled to deploy in a few weeks and had to have someone care for Marie while we were gone. While going over paperwork and legal forms in preparation for them to take Marie for the year, my parents gave us these pillow cases they made for us. I'm impressed by my convincing smile, but I honestly hated everything about this moment.

I found so many pictures and videos of the kids that I'd forgotten about from when they were babies. These were so special because so many of those moments are a blur, and even though I'm sure I thought I would remember it all at the time, there was so much I'd forgotten--from the sound of their babbling to the curl of their hair to the little subtleties of their baby and toddler movements.

Marie:

One month old, the picture we took and sent to Peter
the night he deployed, and two years old.

Erik:

Erik's baptism and a few months/weeks before
turning one. I honestly didn't remember some of
these precious expressions of his...

Ethan:

I'll always regret that I didn't attempt
any real maternity photos with the first
two. I'm so glad I did with Ethan!

Looking back at Erik's pictures, I'm beginning to
get why people always ask if they're twins...

 Siblings:

We're on a boat and...we're going fast and...Daddy's brainwashing
us into being Broncos fans and...

I cannot love all of these pictures of them together enough.

Of course there was Samson, too:

This is for every person who has ever asked: "have you
ever shaved that polar bear?!" Why yes. Yes we have.
[Not recommended!]

Going through all of these memories--what I just spammed you with being just a mere fraction!--made me realize a few things, too.

I had put such a high price on it all, but largely because I spend far too little time transferring them to the ultimate cloud, if you will--my brain. That's the good and the bad of this digital age, I guess: we can capture such a huge volume of memories; but if they just sit there taking up space and not being appreciated, they're far less worthwhile than I think them to be. It'd be much better if I printed them in an actual album, or if we looked at them regularly enough to create a little brain wrinkle that stores them in the best way possible. One of the biggest things I grieved when I thought all was lost was the chance to show our kids pictures of themselves throughout the years--so they could create memories as they learned about their childhood, too. But I wasn't even giving them a chance to do so with what we had. Even things as simple as photo books that I'd promised we could create together online got overshadowed by other priorities.

So in addition to making sure our memories themselves are safer, I'm trying to take a little extra time now with the kids to appreciate the memories we've already made, doing things like pulling up a few videos or pictures some nights instead of bedtime stories or tornado and volcano videos (though I'll have a mutiny if I scratch those completely). I'm also going to do my best to sit down and let each kid pick out their favorite memories from each year and have them help me create annual books for Christmas. They love looking through the few albums we have in the house already--over and over and over--so I already know they'll just love having their very own books.

My hope is that we never "lose" the copies of our memories again, because are hard to recreate--like the sound of a voice on a video or the chance to study every precious detail of an expression. But (knock on wood!) I hope that by making memories more of a priority now it won't seem so devastating if it ever happens in the future!