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Teresa is off having a magical Disney World vacation, but being the trooper she is, wrote us a great Photography Phriday entry before she left. Here’s Teresa:

Hey Scrapping friends!

Along with the love of scrapbooking, typically comes the love of taking the pictures to document all the fun. Unless I make an effort to get in the picture every now and then, our albums would have a ton of pictures of my husband and children and mainly our children together and by themselves. Now I am all for those pictures! I love having pictures of our girls and what is more beautiful in a photo than them? Nothing to me! But when I look back at my childhood albums, it is not so much the photos of me alone that I spend time reflecting on. It is the photos with my family and friends that grab my attention and bring back special memories and moments that I cherish.

As I was catching up a few years ago on our daughter’s albums (back when I used a regular 35mm and got the film developed, stored the photos in a box waiting for that fun time of pulling out all the scrapping goodies- seems like a long time ago) I was catching up on a year or more of photos and I realized that while I had incredible photographs of my children, I did not have photos of them with me.

Well, from that point on I have made an effort to get in photos with our girls and get photos of all of us together. This usually means using the self timer, the camera remote (my favorite), taking a picture in a mirror, or the wonderful stretch your arm out and shoot photograph. My children LOVE taking photos of me and while it does not have us together, it is fun to see the playfulness towards them in the photos and they feel the fun and accomplishment of taking the picture themselves. I have found that these random photographs, while not portraits to blow up and hang on the wall, they are most of my all time favorites! They show our real every day interaction. They show the smiles and to me tell the story of the love and RELATIONSHIP that we share! I get emotional just thinking about twenty, forty, sixty years from now; looking back on these photos together and laughing about how goofy we were and how precious and cherished those times were.

So this weeks goal here at Photography Phriday is to get in the photos! Try to take a photo of you and each of your loved ones and pets and one of all of you together! Do not worry about your method; the end result will be fun! You have to, you have a ScrapMatters assignment! Only use that if you have to but just in case it will help you get this done, I wanted to give you the charge! I can’t wait to see YOU and all those precious people that are special to you. I would love it if you make a page of photos if YOU but if that takes too much time, just post the photos themselves so we can share in your fun! Show us that you are REALLY there and leave those precious photos and memories for those that you love! Thank you so much for playing along! Here is a page that I made of me and my family.

As you all get this Photography Phriday charge to action, I will be in the last days of our family vacation at Disney World so I will look forward to coming home and seeing your photos/pages. Leave us a link in the comments page! I will play along early next week.