Just Because: Me & My Kids

Our family took a end-of-summer mini-vacation last week, and I am anxious to blog about that, but for tonight I am tiding myself over with a quick "Just Because" post from my cell phone's mobile pictures...

I take gobs of photos, but I am not often in pictures. When I am, I seem to be caught mid-expression, or taking a bite of something, or staring into space... "candid" is not my favorite word. ;) For the most part I don't mind. I like to capture what is going on around me... and not be captured, so much. Occasionally though, I want to be in a photo, and I ask someone to take a picture with my camera or - more times than not - I take a picture of myself. I love having pictures with my kiddos. I want them to remember the fun times that we shared together... and here are some of my favorite pictures of me with my favorite 3 kids on Earth that I found on my iPhone when I downloaded the pictures off of it last week.

~ Me & Allie ~

Last Christmas we were in Telluride, CO - one of my favorite places in the world - and I got my sister-in-law to take this picture of me and my girl. I don't know if I ever feel as much at peace anywhere else on Earth as I do in the mountains with my little family.

~ Jack & Me ~

During Spring Break this year I took the kids to downtown Dallas, and I took this photo of me and Jack by a fountain. If I look a little tired - I was. 3 kids on my own in the city was an exhausting adventure, but at the end of the day I was so glad that I had done it! We made memories that day that we will never forget, and I became braver than I knew that I was.

~ Me & Cooper ~

This is one of my favorite photos ever of me an my baby. It captures so much! This was on one of our last days together - just me and him - before the big kids got out of school for summer. He was in a "dress-up phase" and was almost always wearing the costume of one super hero or another. And of course, he has his signature "Cooper Fingers" going on in this photo - one hand in his mouth, one hand in mine. THIS is the way that I think that I will remember this stage of his life, and I am so glad that I took a picture of it.