Tips for capturing the moments that matter

With Mother’s Day comes reflection on your own kids, and your mom too. We like to celebrate all the good things about mothers, but actually moms have a dirty, hard job. Moms are amazing, selfless and giving. BUT, we all know the smiles, words and cuddles with our kids make it all worth it. Those sweet words, ” I love you mom” can make 10 temper tantrums fade into the background of my mind so quickly. I love my kiddos and today I’m going to share a few tips for capturing those moments… the moments that matter most in the end and the ones that truly make it all worth it. #GrowingUpGerber

Time goes by so so fast… It’s so hard for me to believe that I just celebrated my 8th Mother’s Day… seems like I was just pregnant yesterday!

1. Have a phone/camera that takes decent photos- blurry photos are no fun…. With cell phone cameras being so good, there’s hardly a great reason to carry a camera anymore. You can capture those daily moments with your phone! If your phone doesn’t take good photos of moving kids {’cause let’s face it, mine never sit still} I would still carry a camera. There’s nothing worse than a bunch of blurry photos. We still have a DSLR camera for most of the photos I take at home, but when we are out, I just use my phone now. You never know what moments you will appreciate later.. I love these two candid photos… nothing overly exciting was going on when these were taken, but I love that we have them now.

2. Write Things Down. A few years ago my husband gave me these journals to write things down the kids said and did. You can use any notebook, or even start a file on your computer or phone. I love looking back at things like this… and I quote, “Babies are the smallest thing in the world – except rocks. Rocks are smaller than babies, unless it’s a huge rock, then it’s bigger than a baby” haha! From the mouth of a 5 year old.
3. PRINT photos, I know this is just isn’t done as much without film these days, but when I do print photos my kids love to touch them and look at them over and over. It’s just such a great thing to get the photos in their hands. I also make yearly family photo albums Photobooks  are such an easy way to have your photos available to look at all the time. The kids LOVE them.

Here’s my family yearly books…

And a peek inside. I love that you can customize the layout, edit the photos and add text all in the software… These books always turn out gorgeous.

4. Have your kids take photos too. This way mom gets in the picture too, and you help grow the next generation of moment catchers! This is a photo that my 5-year-old took on our Spring Break Vacation to Beijing.. I may crop a bit, but look, mom and dad both in the same photo.. this doesn’t happen very often!

5. Stop breathe, take photo, then rescue kids… Sometimes the photos of those crazy kid moments are the BEST photos later…  You know… the kid eating a worm photo makes the BEST weeding slideshow piece! {ha!} Or the falling asleep at the table shots…

The messy ones!

Or the burning off warts photos {everyone has this photo, right? ha!}

6. Take lots and lots of photos, and delete lots and lots of photos. For every great photo you may see on my blog you can bet I took and deleted 10 others. I literally take hundreds of photos a month, but may only end up with 50-100 that I keep.. This is the joy of digital photos… I remember being so stingy with photos back when it was all film.. Here’s just an example of many photos taken…