Candid Snapshot Memories

A wonderful photographer friend of mine from church recently taught a class on how to improve your everyday snapshots.  She had some REALLY great tips and ideas, and one of my favorites ideas is to take pictures of everyday life to help you remember things down the road (like funny day-to-day things and stages your kids are at) because photos make you remember specific things and times in your life that you wouldn't remember any other way.  So I decided to just keep my camera near at hand over Memorial Day weekend and see what snapshots I could capture of what life is like with the kids right now. 

First, I thought I'd try this out down at Valley Forge for a church breakfast and flag ceremony on Memorial Day. My plan was to capture one shot of each of the kids to highlight what they were doing while running around with food and friends.  Here's what I ended up with: 

McKinley was her usual photogenic self, Maddox was THRILLED with the doughnuts at the breakfast table, and when I asked Kennedy to turn around so I could take her picture, she purposely turned her face away from me, and held out her stick behind her to show me what she thought of taking a picture.  That's about how she's been with everything lately!

The next set of pictures I attempted to get were of the kids out swimming in our kiddie pool/slide that we got out pretty much everyday last week (we've had a little heat spell going).  Taking pictures of Kennedy is always an event, because you never know what mood she's going to be in for them.  Here are some of the beauties we got this time around:

Can you tell she is in a tattletaling and pouty phase of life right now? At least she still can turn on the charm when she decides she wants to!

As for Maddox, he just cracks me up because he does the funniest things all the time (usually things that make no sense to anyone but him.)  This next picture is from when Maddox realized the pavement was hot on his feet.  So does he just tiptoe and run over to the grass as fast as he can like most people would?  No, he decided to put his hands down too so he could walk with his hands AND feet.  That way it took twice as long to get over to the grass, and both his hands and feet got hot instead of just his feet (luckily it wasn't hot enough to burn him at least!)  To make things even harder, he won't hold still long enough to look at the camera, but we did finally get a picture of him looking at me.

And then there's McKinley.  It is impossible to take a "candid" picture of McKinley, because this is what always happens when a camera is around....she poses right at you no matter where you are taking it from with a ready smile.  It's hilarious! 

In addition to the kids, I had to get a photo of what Milt was doing during all of this fun. He decided to golf in our backyard right next to where the kids were swimming.  Aaaah, family fun time for all of us (I think he was hinting that it might be time for him to go play 18 soon).

Also, Milt apparently doesn't like to get his picture taken (I think it's genetic and he gets it from his mom), but this is a pretty accurate shot of what he looks like anytime a camera is pointed at him.

(Just look at that face. I am one lucky lady.)

So those are the pictures that are going to freeze time and capture the memories of our holiday weekend. What great memories we will have forever and ever!  As far as improving my snapshots, at least I've gotten better at catching personality in them, right?!

 Hope you all had a wonderful and memorable Memorial Day!