motherhood

This weekend my friend Tina (aka photographer extraordinaire) made her annual pilgrimage to our home to take our family photos.

She amazes me year after year.

She captures my family in ways that I could not dream of.

I am forever grateful for this.

(she also is very helpful in the area of outfit coordination!!!)

anyway...

this year she had us (Josh & I) take photos with each one of our kids individually which is the first time she has done that.

The photos above are some of the sneaks from our session...

It is motherhood captured by a camera.

The good moments.

Smiling faces.

Hugs.

Love.

Real life isn't always this pretty is it?

Just the other night when I was getting some pictures for Sam for her school family tree project, it prompted the other 4 kids to grab their scrapbooks and start looking at the pictures of themselves.

This did not end well.

Instead of "mom you are awesome, thanks for scrapping parts of my childhood"

It became tears and sadness about why don't I have more photos... and unfortunately for Jack...
"momma where is my album?"

"It is in here Jack"... as I am praying that I have some pictures in his scrapbook...  which I happened to have a few pages done...

That was not enough for my 4 year old.  The tears started coming and he began begging me to drop everything and start working on his book.

At this point McKenna reminded me that I still hadn't let her help me make scones.

I think it was around this point that I started thinking

"why am I killing myself to do all these things for my kids"

"I can't do it... and I am failing miserably"

"now matter what I am doing it isn't enough, because one of them always thinks someone else has something more"

"they don't appreciate the things I do for them... cooking, laundry, field trips, making sure they have everything that they need..."

Then I look at the pictures above...

I am reminded of how it really doesn't matter.  I am doing the best I can.  I know I am not a perfect mom...  I will never be.  But I will always try to do my best... and I love and adore my kids.

And I am forever grateful for photos that capture me with each one of them individually.