Baptism Photo Shoot and Photo Memory Book

Baptisms are a big deal in our family, and when my oldest daughter was preparing for her baptism we had to some up with the traditions we wanted to start.  In our primary, when children get baptized, they try to have some kind of place for people to write messages, memories and testimonies for them.  Traditionally they had used a blue back Book of Mormon, but since our daughter was getting her own new set of scriptures I was afraid that the book would be unused and get lost along with all of the messages.  I decided instead to create a special photo book for her with baptism photos on one side of the page, and a blank page for people to write on on the other side.

Some pages from the book...

                     

My husband is a photographer so it wasn't too difficult for us to decide that we wanted to do a baptism photo shoot.  We didn't want to spend a lot of time on the actual baptism day taking photos because there would be a lot of family there, her hair would be wet, and we wanted the focus on the baptism itself.  Besides, we needed the pictures in advance so we could print the book.  He ended up taking the pictures about 1 month before her actual baptism.  She and I picked out the dress and accessories, and he choose the locations and poses.  They turned out beautifully, and now she had a beautiful book filled with pictures of her in her special dress and messages of love and faith from her family and friends.

The Book

The Photo Shoot

Recording Kid Funnies

The moment I walked into my oldest daughter's first parent teacher conference in her kindergarten class, her teacher said, "Oh I have something I have to show you."  She pulled out a spiral notebook where she kept a list of some of the funny things that the kids in her class would say and gave us a list of the funny things Kylie said in class.
At first I was so amazed that she would take the time to write those things down, and then I thought, "Why am I not doing this."  I had written down a few things in journals, but that night I went home and put a magnet notepad on the fridge so that I could easily jot something down before I forgot it.  The sayings are now treasures.  The kids love to see the funny things they said when they were little, you know like a whole year ago:)  Occasionally I'll post a few of our favorites.