I’ve had several people comment on the photos we take of Emmie every week (I post them on Facebook now, but I’ll start putting them up here), and I have to say that while this was by no means an original idea on our part, I am very glad we’ve taken the time and effort to do this every week (except the week I started interferon, week 3).

One of the other ways I’ve used pictures to document our lives is a little more original, although I’m sure I’m not the first to do this.

Each year, for the past 5 years, I’ve made a small “yearbook of the events of the past year. It started as a way to help our families feel involved in our new lives in far-away Boulder, but it has become a wonderful way for us to remember all the big and not-so-big events of the year through the pictures we took.

My favorite part (and the most time consuming part) is sorting through all of the digital images of the year. The crappy cell phone pictures, the amazing shots, the funny-only-to-us photos that remind us of great times with friends and family that we otherwise might have forgotten.

I didn’t actually finish the book last year, because I was right in the middle of the first trimester then and felt horrible, so I actually just finished the book for 2010. It was interesting and fun to look back at our life before baby, and even more fun to look at the pictures from trips we took right before we found out we were pregnant.

It was also the year Alicia passed away, and it was interesting to compare my recollections of pictures from that time to the pictures I actually had. In my memory, I felt like I hadn’t taken any pictures the whole year, but in reality, the book is probably longer than any other so far. I didn’t take as many “artistic” shots as I have in years past, mainly because I was working full-time for the first time, but I did take plenty of other kinds of pictures.

If people are interested, I can share some pages or pictures of the books for people to see more of how I did it.