A couple of days ago, this colorfully-decorated package arrived on our doorstep. (Okay, mail doesn’t arrive on our doorstep, it arrives in the mailbox by our gate. Though this package didn’t even arrive there, our mail carrier walked it around back and left it by our garage. Our mailman is thoughtful like that.) We noticed it as we were leaving to go out to dinner, so we took it with us and opened it at Boston Market while we were waiting for our food.

It was an Easter package for Annalie! Her cousins Brett & Leo made these signs for her and her Aunt Dana packaged them up with a cute stuffed frog (promptly christened “Froggie”) and an assortment of Easter goodies including sour apple edible Easter grass, neapolitan chocolate eggs, and a chocolate bunny.

We all tried the edible grass, curious what it would taste like. Annalie thought it was just okay, but Troy and I quite liked it so Annalie generously told us we could have it. It sorta has the texture of a rice cake and is mildly sweet. What Annalie really wanted to eat right away was one of the Neapolitan chocolate eggs, which were flat egg-shaped candies with layers of chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. She ate one the day we opened the package, and another the next day.

This morning she asked me if she could have one of her chocolate eggs. Distracted by a phone call from a friend, I said that was fine. Sensing my distraction, she asked if she could have two chocolate eggs. I said, sure, go ahead, and went back to my conversation.

Ten minutes later I was off the phone and leaving the bedroom when Annalie walked up to me and said apologetically, “Mom, I have to tell you something. I accidentally ate ALL my Neapolitan chocolate eggs that were left.”

I sighed. “Annalie, why did you do that? I hope you don’t get a stomachache now. How many did you eat?”

“I dunno. I think there were…twenty-ten?”

“Well, you can’t have any more candy or sweets for the rest of the day.”

“Okay. I’m sorry I ate them all without asking you but…they were just so DELICIOUS I couldn’t stop eating them!”

It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since Troy’s dad died. It seems like it was just the other day that Troy was calling him on the phone, that I shook my head and tried not to smile while Keith laughed uproariously at an awful joke he’d just told me, that Annalie was asking her Grandpa Keith if they could go feed the neighbor’s dogs some treats from the container they kept in their garage.

I’ve been looking through old photos and have realized something: I don’t have many photos of Keith. It’s not that he disliked having his photo taken, exactly; but he didn’t encourage it either. After Annalie was born I took more photos, but still not many. I think back now to the one Christmas we were all together in Omaha: Keith and Valetta, both of Troy’s sisters and brothers-in-law, Troy and me, and Annalie and her two cousins. For some reason I didn’t take many photos that day, and I truly regret it now. It would be nice to have even one photo of Keith with all of his grandkids. Not that the photo would make us miss Keith any less, but it would be something.

Next time I want to take some pictures but am feeling shy or afraid of appearing pushy, or someone’s telling me, “Point that thing somewhere else!” I’m going to try to remember that regret. Because someday I might want those photos to help me remember.

…When Casper said she was somewhere last weekend where “WAY too many photos were taken,” my heart creaked a little bit. There’s no such thing as too many photos!…

Photographs are the way you remain immortal to your family. Don’t cringe and pull away when someone wants to photograph you. (THAT’S what gives you the appearance of a double chin, by the way, the cringing and pulling back. No one is as fat as she imagines herself to be. Your chin is lovely, I promise.) Photograph everyone you cherish, and let them cherish you the same way.

Written by the unnamed “actual photojournalist-type person” who contributed some tips about appearing one’s best in photos to an August 2007 Advice Smackdown.

“This was generally fine by me, as keeping my children out of raging fires is pretty close to the top of my parental to-do list. It’s like one of my core parenting philosophies, right up there with keeping the hyenas away. The downside, of course, was that I was the one who had to get his eyebrows scorched so that Sam could have a toasted marshmallow treat, take one bite, then declare that she didn’t like it.”

–Jamie Madigan in his weekly report on his daughters’ lives, Week 232: Fireworks, Flames and Sleep