my favorite photo from 2015

There are all kinds of mommas out there.  Some of us are really great at helping out at school and bringing in the best classroom snacks.  Some of us moms can clean and organize like nobody's business.  Some of us plan amazing parties, and some of us seem to balance it all effortlessly.  It takes all kinds of us mommas - so be proud of whatever it is that you bring to your village!

Personally, I'm the kind of mom that has her camera or phone out to snap pictures of the big events and of the everyday normal, boring stuff.  Our family yearbook is one of my very favorite things to create and is the biggest motivation to have my camera ready to snag the photos of what our days feel like right in this moment of very young kids where the days pass by in a bizarre and loud blur.  I'm the girl receiving regular reminders that my phone storage is low due to photo capacity.

When I was happily browsing Social Print Studio and daydreaming about my next purchase, I started wondering about choosing a single favorite photo from 2015.  I mean, could it even be done, just one single favorite photo?

I took a lot of photos that I really love over the course of 2015, it was a big one for us, after all.  We traveled to the Dominican Republic for a family vacation, we celebrated our baby's first birthday, our son started Kindergarten...it was a record year!  Even though I have loved tons of pictures from last year, it didn't take more than a few minutes to zero in on the number one favorite capture.  Out of all of those major events, my favorite photo actually comes from a regular moment on a regular day with our two girls.

I am one of three sisters, and for all my life, I will be grateful to be a sister of sisters.  For all my life, I will be grateful to be a mother of sisters.  A complete dialogue of a secret, silent language occurs within a glimpse between sisters.  Our husbands sit among us with furrowed eyebrows as the three of us hold entire conversations without ever finishing a sentence in it's entirety.

As with all siblings, there is a loyalty that runs deeper than comprehension, born into our bones through shared DNA and childhood memories.  But with sisters, that loyalty is laced with understanding and empathy and forgiveness.  I see this already in our girls at only four and a year and a half and my heart swells with joy and relief.  They will always have each other, and hopefully they'll also adopt their, future cousins and sisters-in-law into their little circle of giggling and shared desserts and unfinished sentences.

That's what this photo shines out for me; that secret language between sisters.  The mutual admiration and love and reverence that sisters extend to each other.  I imagine I will spend the rest of my life looking out at our two girls sharing a glance just as this one and I'll understand that secrets are being passed, even though I'll never quite know exactly what those secrets are without asking.  And that's just fine, because I'm content in knowing that they have each other, that I have a lifetime of motherhood to watch their relationship grow and flourish.
Our girls.
I will love this photo forever.

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I have been a fan of Social Print Studio for a few years now, they have excellent products and make ordering prints of all of those instagram photos that tend to get stuck in cyberspace rather than printed super easy.  For two years, I have created and printed a collage of twelve of my favorite photos for the year to display in our staircase photo wall.  And the mini square prints are perfect to tack into our kids' baby books of all those magical little moments that is kind of what instagram photos are for.   One of my favorite and most unique Christmas gifts was the tearaway calendar that my brother in law gifted me once.  All of these thoughts are my own, and seriously, check them out - I can promise you that SPS is awesome.


ps. scf, i love you.