Noel and I don’t really have a great history with cameras. While we were dating, Noel ruined his camera when he left it in the pocket of his swim shorts and my camera decided to create abstract pictures instead of capturing reality. When we got married, we took a new camera with us on our honeymoon and left it on the roof of our car when we were leaving a trailhead parking lot at Bryce Canyon. That made for a fun first quarrel as newlyweds as we searched under people’s cars and bushwhacked weeds on the side of the road when we retraced our steps 30 minutes later. We never found the camera and no one returned it to the Visitor’s Center. (I just hope those awesome photos of “Just Married” written in red dirt on the back of the Honda are making someone feel very guilty.) After that, we were very careful to not leave cameras on top of the car (although computers are another story). Obsessively checking our roof didn’t keep someone from stealing our new camera out of our car though. The police of course never recovered it and we bought yet another. At that point we pretty much guarded camera #5 with our life (and still use it to this day). However, even though we had a trusty camera we discovered we aren’t actually very good at taking pictures.

Yesterday, was Ellen’s first Fourth of July and we didn’t take a single picture. Both of the kids were even decked out in cute patriotic outfits. We also had friends over that we hadn’t seen since we moved to Colorado. Somehow Cooper happily playing with their two cute little girls didn’t get us thinking about capturing the moment. So, our apologies, but there won’t be any cute Fourth of July photos this year. You’ll just have to take our word that the kids were cute, the company was hilarious, and we all had a great time even though all the fireworks shows were cancelled. We’ll try to do better at photo documentation. If we remember.