A week in our life, day one

My grandfather passed away just over 11 years ago. Right before he died, my family was at my grandparents' house, cleaning out 35 years of memories. While we were doing that, we came upon boxes of photos. In one of those boxes was a photo my great-grandfather took while aboard ship (in the Navy) of a casket being lowered onto the main deck. I love that photo, and it bothers me to this day I didn't just put it in my pocket right then & there. Because no one knows what happened to that photo (it's probably in a box in a garage at my uncle's!). Nor do they believe that it exists.

Why has it stuck with me all these years?

Because it told a story.

A story of my great-grandfather's life that I had no other way of knowing. He died when my mother was two, long before I was even dreamed about. I love that he took the time to document that moment, back before everything was digital & it was cool to say you took 199 decent photos in one day.

And a story about how photography is in my blood. Which, I'll be honest, means more to me than the story in that photo. I love that I feel this kinship with a man I never knew because we both felt the need to document our lives for future generations.

When I started reading about Ali Edwards "A Week in the Life" I knew I had to do it. Sure, I take photos of LOTS of things. But I wanted a reason to share what our life is like in 2010 to my grandchildren. I want them to be able to look back & know what it felt like to find that old photo of a casket being lowered aboard ship.

So I took 199 photos today.

Some were of us doing our normal routine. Some were of things around the house. And plenty were taken by my daughter in the backseat of my car!

My focus this week is on taking pictures, collecting receipts & tags & other things that are from our day, editing thru some of it nightly, and getting it written down. A box of goodies arrived from twopeasinabucket.com today, and I finally picked up a pack of 30 baseball card holder pages from Target for $4.99, so I'm good to go!

Tomorrow I'll talk about the supplies I'm using. I'll leave you with a few of my faves from the day: