Steam Train: Cheeeeeeeese

For the past week, Sarah's parents have been visiting.  Grace loves the presence of Grandma and Papa (Sam does too, but Grace more so) and so do we.  The presence of grandparents means Sarah and I have more hands to take care of the kids.  This is especially helpful when we are actually trying to accomplish tasks, even simple ones like making dinner.  It also usually means, because of the shared workload, the kids get to go do more fun adventures than usual.  We took a lot of photos, and now that Allan & Joan have returned home, and the kids are back in daycare, I look forward to taking some time to share those adventures with you.  

Mt Rainier Steam Train: Part 1 - Saying Cheeeeeeeeeeese!!!!!

Part of being a "good" parent means you take hundreds, if not thousands, of photographs to document all the fun things you did with your children.  It's as if we want proof, should the need arise for CPS investigation or simply due to rainy dreary winters, that we once shared happy memories with our children.  Of course, the ironic thing about taking photos of happy moments is how arduous and stressing this task can be.  

In this post you see 7 photos, all similar, none quite the same, and not one of them perfect.  These photos are about 1/2 of the photos taken just in this one spot.  After another round of deletions we'll start the editing process.  We'll edit 3 or 4 with color, shading, and cropping.  Only then will we be able to perform side by side comparisons to pick that one great photo which will hang on the mantle/fridge/wall.  So much time spent on trying to perfect a fleeting moment.  Is it worth it?  Somehow, I think there's more to the story than just the photo...

In the photo above, and in the next 4, you can clearly see Grace saying, "Cheese!"  It's what we were all taught as children, and what we all teach our children.  Why?  Simply because if you say cheese, and take a photo at the end of the word (it's one syllable, it's hard to get the photo at the beginning of the word where you say "Ch"), it pretty much looks like a smile.  I'll wait a moment while you practice this in your mind...  Kind of sneaky eh?  Well, this all works really well as long as you say "cheese" normally.  Our child, of course, decides she has her own special way of saying it.  If you could imagine a barbershop quartet, and isolate the bass singer - think of how he would sing the word "cheese" with a lasting low and ringing bellow.  Finally, changing that smooth melodic bellow into more of a guttural growl AAANNNND, there is Grace's rendition of "CHEEEEEEEEEEESE."

Glasses off - both saying cheese. 

Glasses back on - I quit saying cheese five seconds ago. 

 I feel this photo does the best job of visually expressing the description I listed above.  

You can see Grace's face stressing to really grunt out that low growling "CHEEEEESE!"

At some point, Grace simply looses interest completely.  The train is way cooler than this lady who is taking photo after photo after photo.  Grace loves Mom, that's for sure, but it's not every day you get to check out a really old train!

In the end, I think the lack of perfection is really the whole point.  The day itself wasn't perfect, and more importantly, I enjoy the story of Grace and her hilarious "CHEEEEEEEESE" more than I would enjoy one completely correct photo in front of a very old train.  Thank you non-perfect photo for reminding me of what a good time I had that day.